Protection
by Lucy Van Pelt
Summary: After the death of her mother, Buffy prevails on Spike to help protect Dawn from Glory. Part One of an ongoing series. *Repost*
1. Chapter One

Title:  Protection

Pairing:  Buffy and Spike

Rating:  R.  And a strong R for language, violence, and sexual situations.  

Summary:  After the death of her mother, Buffy prevails on Spike to help protect Dawn from Glory.  This is Part One of an on-going series, followed by Fever, Redemption and Benediction.

Disclaimer:  I own 1/3 of a house, a 1991 Saturn, and the oldest stereo known to man (8-Track, anyone?).  Joss owns a house or two, a fleet of nice cars, and claim to all the characters in this story.

Author's Note:  This is a repost of a previously NC-17 rated fic.  I have not changed a thing, though I have had the opportunity to expunge a few spelling errors and fix some syntax here and there.  For the most part, I would almost classify this story as PG-13, but I should warn sensitive readers that chapter five is explicit, but nothing worse than what the UPN would air during the "family hour".

CHAPTER ONE

            It is nighttime and the house is eerily quiet after a day of receiving mourners and friends.  Buffy is making her way slowly through the upstairs rooms.  She checks on Dawn one last time and finds her cozied up with a stuffed animal in her bed, sleeping peacefully.  Flipping off the light switches as she goes, Buffy encounters the open door of her mother's bedroom.  There is a coldness in there that reaches out to her, much like her mother's warmth did when she was alive.  She pauses there for a minute, taking in the lingering scent of her mother's perfume, the sight of the numbers on her mother's alarm clock glowing red in the dark.  It's all very still.  She thinks of the time when Faith came bursting through the window.  She had been able to dispatch that predator.  But this one, the one that took her mother's life, she never even saw.  She could only define its presence in her mother's exhaustion and despair.  

            She walks down the stairs, smoothing her hand along the banister and making slow, measured steps, trying not to disturb the peacefulness of the house.  She is tired, but she won't sleep.  She has tried in the nights before, tried and failed and has given into tears.  The sentiments of the past few days keep echoing through her mind in a spoken word gallery.  She was doing so well…she looked so good the last time I saw her…she was such a good person…she was lucky to have you as a daughter…

            Buffy is now in the living room.  One of the in table lamps is on, but that is the only source of light.  And there is the sofa.  She has looked at that sofa a million times, but she has never quite viewed it as she does now.  She cannot see her friends gathered there for Scooby meetings or movie night.  She only sees the sofa as her mother's catafalque.  Buffy has not sat there since the day she found her.  She could barely stand to see anyone sitting there after the funeral.  How obscene to see people sitting there with their paper plates teetering on their laps.  Many times she had to battle the urge to scream, "Don't you know what happened there?  My mother died there!"

            "Mom?"  she says.  Saying the name startles her, as though she has heard someone else say it.  She says it again, observing how her lips come together, slightly vibrating in the M sound, and how there is a natural, rising lilt of expectation as though she is counting on an answer.  She says it over and over, while slowly approaching the couch.  Her eyes are blurring with tears and the back of her throat aches.  When she finally gets to the sofa, she collapses in heaving sobs, saying the word, "Mom".  She nestles her head on the back of the sofa and lets the tears roll.

            But outside the window, there is something.  Through the blinding veil of tears, she sees something…something black and white and dappled with blots of moisture.  She blinks her eyes a few times.  The image becomes clearer now.  It is a man.  No, not a man.  She instantly recognizes the crown of bleached white hair, the pale, sun forgotten skin.  The mouth that always looks as though its about to curl into a sneer.  This is not a man.  This is Spike.

            There is a surging anger in her now as she gets up from the sofa and heads for the door.  She is angry about being snapped from a moment of indulgent grief to have to attend to the business of getting a vamp off her property.  She throws open the door and he is right there, waiting to be invited in.

            "What do you want?"  she says through her teeth.

            "I just thought you might be lonely,"  he says.  

            There is an apologetic look on his face, but she cannot see it for the look of the growling, perverse vampire which resides directly behind the façade. She can only and always see that.

            "How can I be lonely?  You're always around!  I've forgotten what being alone is.  You know, sometimes it's like my life is this big 'Where's Waldo?' book.  Only it's called, 'Where's Spike?'.  I know you're in every picture of every page of my life."

            "I didn't come here to start something with you,"  he says.

            "Well you know that's how it always ends up.  At least you should know after one hundred and fifty times.  Really, Spike.  I don't know if I should congratulate you for being such a trooper or stake you for it.  But I've just about had it.  No!  I have had it.  I'm tired of you seeking me out when you know I don't want to see you---ever!  Anywhere!  Except maybe in a pile of dust at my feet.  I want this to stop, right now, right at this moment.  OK?"

            He waits to speak, letting her cool down, giving her time to load up for another barrage of insults and accusations.

            "Are you finished?"  he asks.

            "Are you?"  she says indignantly.

            "Look, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your mother."

            Her mouth flies open.  "How did _you know?"_

            "The funeral today.  I was there."  There is something akin to emotion in his eyes and then deep embarrassment.  He looks down at his shoes.  "It was sort of on my turf, you know."

            Buffy flinches at the fact that her mother and Spike are new neighbors by proxy and instantly thinks she should have chosen another cemetery across town.  But this one was closer to her home.  

            "I wanted to go to you today,"  he continues.  "I saw how sad you where.  I couldn't bear to see you like that and not put my arms around you, hold you----

            "Stop!  Stop it right now!  I don't want to hear anymore,"  she says, trying hard not to let his words sway her from her "Spike is evil" stance.

            "It was all I could do to keep from rushing over to you."

            "Stop it!"

            "Buffy, I can't stand to see you in pain.  Ever since I first realized I loved you, seeing you hurt makes me hurt worse than this bloody chip when I hit someone.  That night, on the back porch, when I saw you crying over your mother…I came to you with every intention of killing you, but I couldn't.  I couldn't make myself."

            She remembers that night.  The shotgun in his hands.  The sizzling hatred in his eyes.   The sound the gun made when he cocked it and aimed it steadily at her.  But the gun didn't go off.  She is remembering the look on his face when he saw her tears.  She had never seen it before.  She could have almost said he looked sorry, or terrified that he was seeing her in a new light and didn't know quite what to do.  But he knew exactly what to do.  He was there for her.  She remembers the awkward pat on the back and how strange it made her feel to have him that close and know he wasn't trying to kill her for once.

            "You were the first person I told,"  she says.  "About my mother."

            "I know,"  he says.

            "I don't know why I told you."

            "Because I asked."

            She folds her arms and leans heavily against the doorframe, too exhausted to say anything.

            "I just want you to know that I'm a decent fellow.  No matter what you think.  Buffy, I've changed.  You know that.  And I'm sorry if I've been coming on too strong.  Chaining you up under my crypt wasn't the best idea in retrospect.  Vamps usually go for that sort of thing, and I should have known you wouldn't like it.  Because you're you.  You're this thing I can't get out of my head.  And I'm caught between wanting it out almost as much as I want this chip out and loving having it with me."

            Again, she cannot say anything.  Her mind assembles some retort, but her mouth can't form the words.  Vaguely, she is saying in her looks, "Go away.  Get out of here.  I don't want you.  You are here and I don't want you here.  You were there…you were there that night when I needed someone…you were there…you are here…I need someone…"

            "Well,"  he says.  "Like I said, I didn't come here to start anything with you.  And I've probably said too much.  I'll be on my way now.  And again, I'm very sorry about your mother."

            He turns and walks away.  She watches him go down the steps without looking back.  She has always hated the way he walks.  His gait is somewhere between that of a pimp and a NFL linebacker.  But there is something different about how he's walking now.  His shoulders are hunched in defeat.  He has been beaten back again.  She has been really harsh with him lately.  Her words lately have been worse than her throws and punches when he was chip free.  But he has deserved everything.  He needs to be treated badly.  He's a killer.  If he didn't have that chip, there wouldn't be a person left with a jugular in all of Sunnydale, she says to herself.  But he didn't come here tonight to kill her.  He didn't come here to insult her or belittle her about her life, her poor choice of boyfriends.  He just came to say he was sorry.

            _How could he be sorry?  He has no soul…_

            "Spike,"  she says.  She can hear herself say it and it makes her shiver, like someone has drawn a cold snowball down her back.

            He turns around instantly.

            She moistens her lips and leans further into the doorframe.  She can't even think lucidly anymore and it surprises her when she hears what she's saying.  "Do you want to come in?"

            She expects to see a certain victory in his face, but instead there is shock.  "Are you inviting me?"

            "Yeah,"  she says.  "I'm inviting you."

            They are seated now in the kitchen, at the table.  There is silence.  The refrigerator has just cycled off.  When it does that Buffy is reminded of how loud it really is.  And how quiet the night can be.  She is still bewildered that she would have invited Spike in and looks at him, sitting there across from her, and binds her thoughts together in a neat bundle.  She knows where all her stakes are.  She knows her crossbow is under her bed.  She has an axe in her closet.  She's twenty years old and she has an axe in her closet and she uses it sometimes.  That seems strange even to her because she's lived this life for so long she should be accustomed to seeing the gleaming blade of the axe next to her Eddie Bauer pants.

            "I think about that night all the time,"  she says.

            Her shoulders are sagging and she is tracing an invisible line on the table with her finger.  Spike watches her do this, watching the finger.  Her fingers are small, puny.  She has such power but she is so slight it seems he could pin her down with just a glance.  But she could trounce him like he was nothing at all in a minute and he's aware of that every time they meet.  

            _She's always beaten me, he says to himself.  __But I think tonight I could win if I wanted to._

            "I think about what you told me outside the Bronze,"  she continues.

            _She is weak like a kitten.  She couldn't swat a fly now.  She has been beaten down by all that has happened.  She couldn't possibly be thinking about her weapons now._

            "About how my ties to the people around me have made me stronger, made me different from the other slayers.  The Scoobies, my sister…my Mom."

            _She is so delicate and light like a buttercup.  I could clip her between my two fingers, hold her up to my chin…_

            She rubs her face with those little fingers and her eyes widen for a second, only to narrow and fall to that invisible line she has been tracing continuously.

            "I feel like I'm losing,"  she says.  "All those ties are disappearing."

            _I could hold her up to my mouth and kiss her.  She is too weak to protest.  She is too despondent to care._

            "I can't lose.  I can never lose.  I've always thought that's what drives me, but you were right.  It's the people in my world that keep me alive, keep me fighting."

            _But I want her to care.  I want her to care very badly.  I want her to know me, to see what I'm really like.  This man, this…vampire.  Have I stopped thinking of myself as being a vampire?  She hasn't…_

_            "She was so pretty right before she died."  She is onto a different thought now, going about the way people do when their thoughts are too numerous to sort out.   "Dawn and I were watching her get dressed for her date, making jokes.  God, I love what Kevin Spacey says in __American Beauty, about how he wishes that people knew when they were going to die.  What day it would be and all.  And how."_

            _But maybe she has.  She's just talking to me like we're old friends.  She's never talked to me like this before.  Except on that night, when she told me about her mother.  She wants me to understand her.  She's…letting me in a little?_

            "I never thought it would end like this.  I always thought I could protect her from anything.  Maybe I have started to see myself as being untouchable.  I remember when I went into the Initiative, and how they all marveled at the number of vamps I had slain, all by myself.  I never even thought about the numbers of vamps I dusted until I told them about it.  It's just what I do."

            _You could slay me.  You with your little hands and your little fingers wrapped around a wooden stake, twisting mercilessly into my chest.  Your little finger, tracing an invisible line.  Where is that line going?  It's not a barrier.  She's not drawing the line between us.  She's drawing it towards me._

            Finally she looks at him.  She has no malice in her stare.  There is helplessness and fear.  She has the look of someone who has just been told that there is nothing left to live for, that there is no hope, no salvation, only torture, pain, and death.

            "I have absolutely no clue what I'm going to do next.  I mean, this is so big.  How am I going to take care of this house?  How am I going to pay the bills?  How am I going to take care of Dawn and go to school?  It's so, so big.  And I haven't had time to think about any of it.  Mom died and it was like, screeching halt!  But now, I'm like, what next?  I can't have her back.  I have to go on.  But I don't know how."

            "Buffy,"  he says.  He reaches for her hand.  That's all he can do.   His fingers clamp around hers.  She doesn't make an effort to withdraw them from his grasp, but fear grips her eyes.  That is enough for him to let go.  "I want to help you."

            Her hand is still on the table.  Without hesitation, he reaches for it again.

            "I want to help you."

            He watches her eyes.  There's a gold band around the green that's reflecting the light.  She doesn't blink for…forever.  She doesn't move.  It looks as though a spell has been cast on her.

            What comes out of her mouth next is too startling to him he's glad that he's sitting when she says it.

            "I need you,"  she says, almost in a whisper.  "I need you to help me take care of Dawn."

            He runs his thumb along the underside of her hand.  "I will, Buffy.  I'll help you anyway I can."

            Buffy swings open the door of the Magic Shop.  It's late afternoon and her classes are over.  Dawn is following her.  She hasn't said a word for several blocks and Buffy has to check and see that she's still behind her.  She is, but many paces down the street.

            "Dawn, are you coming?"

            Her sister nods slowly, staring at the toe of her shoe.

            She waits patiently at the door for her sister to play catch up.  Meanwhile, Giles strides to the door.   He is disheveled today and there is a pencil behind his ear.  When he reaches to embrace her, the pencil slips from its perch and bounces in a happy ping on the floor.  He bends to retrieve it, apologetically, almost.

            "Things are a bit wild around here today.  Anya and I are preparing for tax time.  Anyways…"  He sighs.  "How are you?"

            "Doing all right.  Went back to school today.  Dawn too."

            "How was that?"

            She shrugs.  "I can't remember anything from the time I woke up.  And Dawn's counselor thought she was ready to come back, but…I don't know.  She's not dealing at all."

            Dawn is now in the Magic Shop.  She is standing to herself, arms at her side, like a doll.

            "You all right, Dawn?"  Giles asks.

            She doesn't answer him.  She stares at him like she's trying to figure out what he just said.  But there is nothing else from her except a mesmerizing emptiness in her stare.

            "Giles, I need to talk to you.  Do you have a minute?"

            "Sure, sure.  Let me…let me just…"  he reaches for a clip board on one of the tables by the entrance.

            "Don't touch that!"  Anya calls from somewhere.  "That's where I stopped with the inventory!"

            "Oh, yes, right.  The inventory."  He replaces the clipboard, giving it peevish glance.  "I thought the taggis root was $1.75 an ounce."

            "Nope, $2.00.  Our supplier's prices went up again."

            "If this is a bad time, I could come back,"  Buffy offers.

            "No, no.  I needed to take a break from all this anyway.  Let's go to the training room."

            The sun is bright in the training room and throws beams down on the floor in yellow stripes.  Buffy sits down in one of the beams and throws her head back, letting her hair feather down across her back.  She then draws her legs up and hugs her knees, staring ahead.

            Giles regards her carefully, thinking that he has never seen her look so small and so lost.  It terrifies him.

            "I had a visitor last night,"  she says.

            "Someone I know?"

            "Too well,"  she says.  

            "Someone human?"

            "Not the least bit.  It was Spike."

            "What did he want?  Oh, that was a stupid question.  What does he always want from you?"

            "He said that he wanted to tell me he was sorry about Mom."

            "Oh?"

            "It was really weird.   He really acted like he was sorry.  And we talked.  For a long time.  It was so weird having him there in my kitchen not threatening me or trying to chain me up---

            "In your kitchen?" Giles sputters.

            Her eyes widen and her face flushes.  "Yeah."

            "Buffy, you invited him in?"

            "I did.  But it was OK.  He didn't hurt me.  Nothing was broken.  And when he left, he didn't come back."

            "Why would you invite him in after all the trouble he has caused you?  That's not like you."

            "So I slipped.  Willow and Tara can reinstate the spell if he steps out of line again."

            "And he will.   That's his nature.  You should know that by now."

            "Giles, he was being nice for once.  He let me talk.  He let me vent, get everything out.  And he listened.  It was just so good to have someone there."

            "I offered to stay after the funeral."

            "I know.  And I thought I'd be OK.  But I wasn't.  I fell apart, actually.  And I looked outside and there was Spike.  So he got the invite, got to listen to Buffy rant."  She hesitates before saying the rest.  "There's more."

            "You didn't…"  he can't finish, because the idea of something happening between the two of them is making him too nauseous to speak.

            "What?  No!  He touched my hand.  That was all."

            "That's enough."

            "Anyway.  I told him that I might need help protecting Dawn.  And he offered to look after her when I'm on patrol.  Actually, he offered to patrol for me, but he has too much fun killing his own kind.  So on the nights when I'm patrolling, he's going to come over and watch her for me."

            "Buffy, this is madness!  What were you thinking?"

            "I was thinking about Dawn.  She needs someone with my strength to protect her.  Spike's got it."

            "He's also prone to evil and violence at a moment's notice.  Not the sort of creature I'd want looking after my only sibling."

            "OK, Giles, then what would you suggest?  Sending her to Angel?"

            "No."

            "Putting her in a convent?"

            "No.  But surely there must be other ways to deal with this."

            "Well, I couldn't think of any at the moment.  And I can't think of any alternatives now."

            "Yes, but Buffy---

            "I know what you're thinking.  This has disaster written all over it in big, Sesame Street letters.  But I think it might work out.  It might."

            Giles can only shake his head.  "I think you're putting an opening in a wall that should be kept closed."

            "You're probably right.  But this is all I can do for now.  We'll just see."  She sets her chin down between her knees.  "We'll just see."

            "Buffy, I don't like this,"  Dawn says as she watches her sister gather up her stakes for the night's patrol.

            "I know you don't, but there's nothing else I can do,"  Buffy replies, checking a stake for signs of wear.

            "Having that…monster in the house while I'm trying to sleep.  I mean, it's like, the at home Blair Witch Project or something."

            "Spike promises to be good.  If he isn't, he knows what he's in for,"  she says, spinning the stake in her hand.

            "What if that chip in his head de-activates while he's here?  What if he vamps out on me?  What if Harmony comes around?"  Dawn draws in a breath.  "What if Dru comes back?"

            "Look, if any of those things happen, Spike knows his new home will be a Dust Buster.  Don't worry.  I'm in control."

            Dawn follows her sister down the stairs, still yapping about her fears.  Buffy is too tired to respond.  They're the same questions she's been asking herself.  She is scared.  But at the same time, she thinks she knows it will be all right.  She keeps telling herself that anyway.

            There is a knock at the door.  Dawn draws in another quick breath.

            "He's here,"  Buffy says.

            She opens the door and finds him there, looking like a confident suitor.  All he was missing were the flowers and the candy.

            "Hello, sweetbreads."

            Buffy rolls her eyes.  

            He strides across the threshold and makes eye contact with Dawn, who quickly hides behind her sister.

            "Aw, don't be shy.  We're old friends, aren't we?"

            "Don't start with her, Spike.  Or it ends right here,"  she says, producing a stake from her coat pocket.

            "Oh, and then who will look after Little Bit, then?  Xander?  'Oh, let me be helpless in a million ways, but be funny while I'm doing it.'"

            "Spike!"  Her eyes flash a warning.

            "All right, all right.  I'll keep quiet."  

            Buffy turns to her sister.  "Go to bed on time.  No TV past 10:00.  And don't forget you have a quiz in math tomorrow.  I looked at your homework and saw that big fat D you got last week.  Gotta work on that."

            Dawn's eyes are transmitting about a billion distress signals at once.  Buffy lays a hand on her sister's cheek and smiles.  "You'll be all right."  And then she fires her voice over her shoulder.  "Won't she, Spike?"

            "Right as rain,"  he says.   "I'll be a good babysitter.  Won't chat on the phone.  Won't raid the fridge."  He rubs his stomach.  "I ate before I came.  O Neg.  Fresh from the dairy.  Or dairy maid, as it were."

            She makes for the door, but before she leaves, she turns to Spike just one more time.  "If anything goes wrong---

            "Yeah, I know.  Stake to the heart.  Goodbye Sunnydale, hello Satan."

            "Just checking,"  she says.  "Bye, Dawn.  I'll be back soon."

            After Buffy's departure, Dawn and Spike stand awkwardly in each other's presence.  Dawn switches her weight from hip to hip, squirming in the vampire's stare.  He smiles and heads for the sofa.  Before Dawn can protest, he leaps into the air and lands on the cushions like a pole vaulter.  

            "Don't sit there!"  Dawn says.

            Spike is surprised by the anger in her voice.  It sounds so out of place, coming from someone so small and so young.

            He gets to his feet.  "Why?  Did somebody piss on it or something?"

            "That's where…that's where…"  she can't say it.

            Spike tries hard to interpret the hesitation in her voice.  Then tears appear in her eyes and he knows instantly.

            "Oh,"  he says in a hollow voice.

            All of a sudden there is nothing in the room but Dawn's grief.  It is filling the room with its resonance, its power.  It is wrapping around Spike's throat and threatening to cut all of his oxygen off.  It is enveloping him, and everything else, making it more of a force than life itself.

            Finally, he says, in a small, barely audible voice.  "It must be scary being without your mother all on a sudden."

            Dawn swallows hard as a few tears escape her eyes.  "It is."

            Buffy is moving slowly down her street.  She is sore and she thinks she dislocated her shoulder when she threw a vamp over a tombstone.  She is looking for her house.  She is wondering too what went on while she was gone.  She had trouble focusing tonight.  She couldn't fight very well.  She kept thinking of the what ifs.  What if he's going through my underwear drawer?  What if he's wearing my underwear on his head?   What if he's touching my sheets, sniffing my clothes, beating off to pictures of me, getting his spooge all over the place…eww!

            "This was a bad idea,"  she says to herself.  "Bad, bad, bad idea to have the Big Bad in my house while I'm away."

            She keeps saying "bad" as she's walking, until a passerby looks at her funny.  And she continues on for home.

            The house is quiet and dark when she enters.  Spike is on the floor in front of the TV, watching a home shopping channel.

            "Buffy, do you have this Showtime Rotisserie?"  he asks.

            "No,"  she says.

            "You really should get one.  It'll roast a turkey, a chicken…anything.  And you can cook veggies on top too.  It's brilliant."

            She is not so tired that she can't find this amusing.  A vamp going on about the wonders of modern kitchen technology.  She smiles and he returns the look.  For a minute he looks kind of sweet, like a kid watching cartoons on Saturday morning, waiting for his mother to make pancakes.

            _Mother _

            And the smile disappears from her face.

            "Any trouble while I was gone?"  she asks.

            "None at all."

            "Dawn in bed?"

            "I think.  She hasn't been making much noise lately.  You gotta talk to her about her music, though.  Pitiful stuff.  Maybe I can loan her some Sex Pistols."

            "I think she's a little young for punk, Spike."

            "Oh, no.  She's at the right age."

            She sits down in a chair, letting her purse fall from her arm.  She runs her fingers through her hair, collecting a brittle leaf that must have gotten stuck there while she was fighting.  The two of them are silent and Spike watches her, wondering what she's thinking.  He feels comfortable, at home.  Almost feels like warmth.

            She yawns and lies back in the chair.

            "Tired, slayer?"

            "Yeah,"  she says, closing her eyes for just a second.  "This one vamp in the north sector just wouldn't be killed.  Big guy.  About six four.  Like a piano turned on its side."

            "I think I know that bloke.  Did you get him?"

            "Yep."

            "Good.  He was next on my list."

            She smiles at him again.  It is a labor-intensive act at this point.              

"I suppose you want me to leave now,"  he says.

_Does she?_

"I'm going to bed soon."

He nods.  "I'll be on my merry way, then."  He gathers himself up from the floor and grabs his leather duster from the hearth.

She watches him slip into his coat.  That coat belonged to a slayer.   It's a trophy from one of his kills.  White-hot hate begins to glow in her and she is no longer smiling.

Spike senses something has changed in her and begins fretting.

"What?  Did I do something wrong?"

She frowns.  "No," she says.  And then, "Yes."

"What?"

She doesn't respond.  She stands up and opens the door for him.  "You'd better get back to your crypt now."  She is saying this for his own protection.  She is aware of the stake inside her pocket.  It can still be used.

He studies her for a moment.  What did I do now, he thinks.  Why do I inspire her hatred even when I'm not doing anything at all?

"All right.  I'm going.  I'm going."  He turns to her before he leaves.  "When do you want me back?"

"I don't know.  I'll give you a ring."

"In other words, don't call us, we'll call you sort of thing."

"I guess,"  she says.  She doesn't want to talk to him anymore.  It's an effort now.

When he is out on the porch, he tries to speak to her again.  But she allows him only to say her name.  And she sends him away.

She spends the next few minutes checking everything in the house, making a mental note to herself to buy a padlock for her underwear drawer if she finds anything missing.  But everything appears to be just how it was before she left.  She checks on Dawn one last night, washes her face and crawls into her bed to feign sleep for a few hours before school.

"I hope last night wasn't too totally weird for you, Dawn,"  Buffy says as she slices some banana into her cereal.

"It was kind of weird at first,"  Dawn replies, munching on her cornflakes.  "But then, it was kind of good too."

"What do you mean?"

"We talked a lot.  About…what happened with…you know.  And all that stuff.  He's a good listener.  He really made me feel like he was understanding me, what I was going through and all.  It was kinda like talking to my counselor, but different, because my counselor at school wears these really, really big glasses and always has lipstick on her teeth.  But it was cool to talk to him.  He's just enough on the inside to understand, but just enough on the outside too."

"So that's all you guys did?  Talk?"

"Oh, and then there was the fire."

Buffy's heart begins to race.  "What fire?"

"Just kidding.  Really it was fine.  We talked and watched TV.  And he said this really, really funny thing about cable companies having a bias against the undead, or else they'd wire the graveyard.  He really can be funny sometimes."

Buffy would never admit it to anymore, but sometimes she does find him amusing, even if the things he says are at her expense.  The boy can be witty.  But he can also be dangerous.  And he was in her house last night.

I left my only sibling alone with a vampire…and they watched TV.  It sounded like a story in one of those supermarket tabloids.  But it was true.  

And nothing happened.

"When are you patrolling again?"  Dawn asks.

Buffy hasn't seen her sister this cheerful in days and her happiness is almost blindingly apparent.  She knows what Dawn really wants to know is, when is Spike coming back.  She hadn't left an open invitation for Spike.  But her sister's pleading eyes tell her that she really should get in touch with him again.  

"Soon,"  Buffy says.  "I'll be patrolling again soon."

"Tonight, maybe?"

"No, not tonight,"  Buffy says.  "It's Friday, and we've been cooped up together for a while.  What say us chickens get out and see a movie or something.  _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is playing at the multiplex.  I've heard it's really good."_

"I've heard it's really subtitled, too."

"Reading is good, Dawn."

"Can't we see that new movie about David Arquette and the big, drooling dog?"

"You know, as much as I'm into the whole doofus-paired-with-slobbering-canine, I think I'll pass on that one."


	2. Chapter Two

                                                            CHAPTER TWO

            "That was incredible!"  Dawn is saying for the twentieth time as she and her sister are exiting the movie theater.  It's a little past ten on a Friday night and people are out in force to see the movies at the Sunnydale Multiplex.   Buffy has heard her sister pour on nothing but adulation the whole time the movie was on and she sees this trend continuing throughout the evening.

            "I thought you would like it,"  Buffy said.

            "I mean, the whole thing was great.  The story, the way it was shot---everything."

            "Probably won't win as many Academy Awards as the David Arquette flick, but it'll hold its own at Oscar time."

            "I mean, Buffy…do you think you could do some of those moves that the girl did in the movie?"

            "Oh, yeah.  Totally.  And I do,"  Buffy says.   "All the time."

            "Could you even do that spinny thing she does in the air?"

            "Well, no, I probably couldn't do that.  Mostly because I'm a person and not a digital effect."

            They are heading now for the downtown district.  It's about ten blocks to their home and Buffy wants to get back soon.  Always, in the back of her mind lately, she's been thinking, "I've got to get home…I've got to get home…what if Mom came back."  She is finding that the grieving process is sometimes as much about self-deception as it is about loss.  There is a part of her that still thinks that this all hasn't really happened, that the past few days have been some sort of test for her, something that the Watchers' Council dreamed up in one of their more sadistic moments.    What would you do without your Mother?  You have a week to figure things out.

            _Well, I'd probably ask a vampire to come take care of my sister…_

            Spike approaches the counter at the Sunnydale Stop and Gulp convenience store.  

            "Pack of Marlboros in a box,"  he says.  "Better make that two."

            The blasé and rather corpulent clerk reaches overhead for the two packs and places them on the counter.  

            "You know, you ought to read the warnings on these things sometime.  You might learn something."

            "Well, since I'm not planning on being an expectant mother anytime soon, I think I'll be all right.  And the carbon monoxide---love the stuff.  It's the air I breathe.  And the health warnings…"  his face convulses into vamp mode and he watches as the clerk suddenly, seemingly makes a mental note to file for workman's comp.  "Don't think I have to worry about them either."

            He reaches for the packs and stuffs them into his pocket as the clerk begins to lose all speech capabilities.  He wipes the vampire countenance away before turning around and walking out of the store.

            So, what to do tonight, he wonders to himself as he strides down the main street.  In the days before el chippo Diablo, that answer would be easy.  Killing was always on the agenda.  So many necks, so little time, was his motto.  It has nearly been two years since he had been the Initiative's guinea pig and sometimes it was hard for him to remember the life he had before.  He was certain that if those who knew him in the old country could see him now they would think, "How sad, how pathetic he is.  Watching soaps on the telly all day, chain-smoking, besting other vamps and demons.  Mooning over the slayer…"

            The Slayer.

            He could go to her house, he said to himself.  He had been invited back in.  She had invited him back in to sit at her kitchen table.  He had held her hand, that tiny little hand.  He remembers her eyes.  Spike constantly watches her eyes whenever he's around her because she reveals more than she knows when she's looking at him.  Sometimes there's only blind hatred, but other times there's something else that he cannot define.  It's as though she's mentally adding up why he's in this world and what place he has in it.  And then sometimes it looks as though she's trying to see him, really see him.  And those are the times that give him hope.   He must have questioned Dawn about a hundred times about her sister's feelings for him.  And always, the answer was, "She pretty much hates the ground you walk on" or some variation of that.

            He has been trying so hard, maybe a little bit too hard, to win her over.  Why does she think he is killing vamps in the cemetery?  Does she think that he gets off on that sort of thing?  Well, he does.  But also, he wants her to know that he can be on the side of right sometimes.  He has the capabilities to be put to good use.  Why doesn't she see that?  He has helped her many, many times in the past year.  He helped her and the other Scoobies topple Adam and the Initiative.   He almost single-handedly saved her from being killed by a gang of demons at the magic shop.  He showed her that her goody-two shoes boyfriend wasn't what he seemed.  

            That was a mistake, he thinks to himself as he lights a cigarette.  I shouldn't have taken her to that nest to show her what Riley was up to when he wasn't being a big,  self-righteous pain in the ass.  What was he thinking?  In the back of his mind, he dreamed that she would be grateful to him, that she would leap into his arms and say, "Oh, you're the only one I can trust now, Spike."  Nothing like that had happened.  On the contrary, she reacted with such a frosty rebuff he is still feeling the chill.

            "I never should have told her that I loved her,"  he says to himself.  "I should have waited.  Let her get Captain Cardboard out of her system."

            At this moment, something grabs him and he is instantly lifted off his feet and plunged into the darkness of an alleyway.  His back feels the hardness of a stone wall, not before his head is nearly knocked senseless by the force of being driven into it.  His shoulders are pinned and his feet dangle precariously above the ground.  He struggles to see in the blackness, and can discern a figure before him, black and hulking and smelling of every waste product on the West Coast.  He is too dazed to think and as he maneuvers to free himself from the creature's grasp, but he is pinned once again, this time by arms thrust from either side.  _Three against one, he quickly assesses__.  I guess I had this one coming…_

            "We've been looking for you, Spike,"  a voice snarls in front of him.  

            "Really?  You Scientologists have gotten a little militant with your membership drives, haven't you?"  he replies coolly, though, if he had a beating heart, it would be racing.

            He is forced once again against the wall and for a minute he sees stars.

            "Shut up, Spike!  You're lucky that we got to you first.  The others wouldn't be so kind,"  the voice says again.

            "What do you want?"  

            "The word is out, Spike.  You've been knocking off vamps at night.  Helping the Slayer.  Rumor is that you're in love with her."

            "Slayer?  Don't know her.  Is she a Scientologist too?"

            "Don't try to be funny,"  the voice is closer now, like a knife blade against his neck.  "I bet you have a stake on you, now."

            "Steak?  Don't be silly.  I'm a vegan."

            "Search him!"  the voice commands.

            Briefly, his feet are reunited with the ground.  One of the vamps holds him as he is stripped roughly of his leather duster.  Once he is free of their grasp, he finds a window of opportunity to flee, but before he can take a step, something sharp pierces the skin on his chest, just barely.

            "Then what you do call this?"  the voice asks.  

            "How'd that get there?"  he says.  _So this is what the end is going to be, he thinks to himself.  __Cornered by three smelly vamps in an alleyway.  __I always hoped for better…_

            "Did the Slayer give this to you?"

            "No, I made it myself.  You can tell by the craftsmanship and attention to detail.  It's a Spike original."

            "Then you're to die by your own weapon.   You can see for yourself that it really works."

            The vamp draws back his arm with the stake curled in his fingers.  _How does one prepare for this, he wonders__.  Does hell happen right away or does that come later?_

_            In the seconds that he waits in agony for the final plunge, there is a blood-curdling scream of death, but it's not his.  His ears catch the sound of dust raining down on the sidewalk below.  He squints to see a tiny figure, her own stake in her hand, at the ready for another kill._

            "Did I interrupt something?"  he hears Buffy say.  And it is the most beautiful sound he's ever heard.

            The hands that had been holding him fast to the wall now tense, then fall away.  Spike rallies himself to throw a punch, but his knees buckle, and he finds himself on the ground, his palms violently smacking the sidewalk.  He raises his head weakly and sees that the two who were holding him are now approaching the Slayer.  She is saying something to them.  Her voice is strong without a twinge of fear.  

            Then the kicks begin.  And the punches.   The alleyway echoes with the sounds of her fists pummeling hard, her grunts and thrusts.  One of the vamps is tossed next to him and lies there dazed, as Spike's hand suddenly finds his stake is within reach.  But he can't quite get to it.  Then he hears that terrible, gushing sound every vamp dreads---that sickening crunch of bone and sinew as chiseled wood meets heart and the vampire's life is over.  Again, dust powders the ground.  Now the vamp next to him has successfully regrouped and he charges towards Buffy, tackling her from behind.  Spike hears the struggle.  There is something in him now that wants to fight, gives him the strength to rise and spring to action.  Off the ground and running, he can barely see his target, but he hears the two in front of him.  He reaches out in the darkness and his hand finds the woolen texture of a shirt drawn taut against a wide, muscular back.  He pulls the stake back and then plunges it deeply into the body, the corpse disappearing in a howl beneath his curled fist.

            Silence rules the alleyway and there are no words for a long time between the two of them.  He has just saved her life again.  And again, there are no thank you's.  He waits to hear those words every time and every time, his patience is undermined by her stubbornness.  

            _But she saved my life this time…why?_

            She is moving now.  Something on the ground has attracted his attention.  His leather duster, lying now in a pile of dust that could very well have been his had she not intervened.

            "Is this what they wanted?"  she asks as she holds up the coat, shaking it free of the vamp's remains.

            "Nice to know some people in this town still have fashion sense,"  he says.  

            She holds the coat for a moment before turning it over to him.  But there are still no words of gratitude, from him or from her.

            "Did you know them?"

"No.  I don't think so.  They're probably the same sort that broke into my crypt the other day.  Smashed my TV.  Tried to set the place alight.  Stupid bloody vamps.  Don't even know that stone doesn't burn."

"How do you know that vamps did it?"

"They stole all my blood from the fridge.  Either it was the work of  vamps on a rampage or some bizarre tactics of a rather vigilant wing of the Red Cross."

"Why are they singling out you?"

"Because some of the vamps in this town don't like the fact that Spike wields a stake against his brethren now, I suppose."

Together they walk back into the lighted main street, emerging as triumphant gladiators to Dawn's cheering approval.

            "Did you get them?"  she asks.

            "Yeah, we got them,"  Buffy says.  "You didn't watch, did you?"

            "Nope.  I heard a lot, though."

The three walk in silence, not really as an ensemble.  Spike walks slightly behind, wondering if he's being included in the excursion or if he's being left behind without so much as a good-bye.  Finally, he catches up to Buffy, touches her by the shoulder.  She doesn't turn or even acknowledge the gesture, but keeps her stride steady and her eyes straight ahead.

"Buffy,"  he says.  "Buffy, why did you do that?"

"Don't flatter yourself,"  she says.  "I heard threatening voices in the alleyway and thought someone might be in trouble.  I didn't know it was you."  

"But even after you saw it was me,"  he says.   "I mean, it's your birthright to protect the innocent, not other vampires, right?"

"It's my job to kill vampires,"  she nearly hisses.

"But there were four vampires in the alleyway.  And one of them didn't get a stake."

All of a sudden, she grabs him and sends him swirling into a nearby lamppost.  His face is pressed against the cold metal, her stake is pressed against his back.  She leans her head near his and whispers in an icy, steely voice, "Sorry, Spike.  Didn't want you to feel left out."

He manages a nervous, thready laugh.  "Rough treatment for someone who just saved your life."

She relinquishes her hold and he slips away from the lamppost.  "You didn't save my life,"  she says,  "I saved your life."

"Oh, right.  And the bloody vamp who grabbed you from behind.  You had him sunk in the side pocket, didn't you?"

"I could have had him,"  she said.  "I still had my weapon.  I saved your life, Spike.  Not the other way around."

"Buffy, you're forgetting the lessons I taught you.  Lesson the first:  a slayer must always reach for her weapon.  He already had his at the ready.  He had you from behind, love.  You could have been drained dry."

"Oh, please!  I was about to flip him like a pancake!  You were the one who was all helpless and struggling.  Didn't take me much effort to finish them off.  What was your problem?"

"Buffy, there were three of them!"

"So?  I staked a whole nest before."

"And you didn't kill all three.  I killed the third."  He points at her violently with his index finger.  "I killed the third!"

"OK, so you killed the third.  But I killed the one who was about to make you Satan's new boy toy."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"All right then!"

"All right!"

"Then I guess you saved my life!"

"Yes, I did!"

"Well, thank you!"

They have been shouting to the tops of their lungs.  And now there is a hush.  They are standing directly across from each other.  She is so close he could touch her, but he doesn't.  He can feel something like a caress in her the words that come next.

"You're welcome,"  she says.

Dawn is off by herself, having watched the whole thing, wondering if her sister was about to forget her promise to their mother:  I'll never stake a vamp in front of Dawn.  But Buffy would never stake Spike.  Not now, not ever, Dawn felt certain, especially after witnessing their sparring up close.  Buffy loves the fight,  Dawn thinks to herself.  It's not so much the kill, but it's the fight.  And she loves to fight with Spike.  She sees for herself how Buffy likes to toy with him, likes to feel the pain break across his face when she's not even throwing a single punch.   Buffy did nothing to inspire Spike's love for her, but she has done nothing to discourage it, either.  Dawn feels sure that if she merely ignored Spike, then he would go away.  And she also sees what has really kept her sister winning all this time.  She doesn't give up, and she must always be right.   When she feels herself losing, she climbs further, strains harder, fights stronger.  And she also knows why Spike is so hooked on her.  With her sister Buffy, he has finally found his match.

Although Buffy is clearly the victor this time, this does not keep Spike from trying for a rematch.  He follows the sisters as they head for their home, as though he thinks of himself as part of their clan, as though he is one of them.   He desperately wants to be, its seems, almost to the point of being pathetic.  This little taste he's had of being in Buffy's house, invited in as a friend almost, has left him hungry for more.  Dawn heard what he said in the alleyway, how the other vamps have been after him.

_He's not wanted anywhere he goes,  Dawn thinks.  __He doesn't have anywhere to go.  And the other night he was sitting on my living room floor making me laugh.  He acted like he belonged there.  Or maybe I made him think he belonged there.  But it's no wonder he likes us better than the vamps.  We'll never kill him.  Buffy will never kill him._

            "Spike,"  Buffy says at length.  "I need you to watch Dawn tomorrow night.  I have a feeling that during my downtime, the cemetery's gotten full of vamps again.  If there were three on you tonight, there are probably three hundred more where they came from."

            "Aww…I'm all a quiver.  Out to nab my enemies before they have a chance to have a little pin the stake in Spike fun again."

            "Spike, let's just get one thing straight.  I am not protecting you.  You are protecting Dawn.  That is what I asked you to do."

            As a group, they have stopped walking.  Dawn is at the end of the line, giving the vampire and his erstwhile slayer room to talk, room to spat, room to throw each other around until Kingdom Come.  But she thinks that they have stopped fighting for the night.  

            "And I said that I would,"  he said.

            It is difficult for her to say the next sentence, but she squeezes it out, nearly closing her eyes as she does.  Certainly she can't place her stare on him.

            "I saved you tonight because right now…right now I have to…rely on you.  You're the only one who can help me.  I hate to say it, but you are the only one."

            Her desperation is etched on her face in broad strokes.  In the lamplight she looks many years older than her twenty years.  Her face is tired, careworn.  The young woman has gone and left her house in a shambles.  But still there is a vague confidence about her.  And her devotion to her sister is no palpable for a moment, for just a moment, Spike envies her.  She is the most human human he's ever known.  He was basking in this knowledge that he was the only one in the world she could rely on.  He has guessed at that, and she just confirmed it for him.  His life was worth something to her.

            _Vampires have only one person to fear…and that's the slayer.  This one may threaten and strut around with a stake she says is intended for me, but she won't kill me now._

            "Buffy, I gave you my word."

            "It's the word of a vampire."

            "But it's my word to you.  And I…"  He's not going to say it again.  He's said it alone, he's said it to her, many times, but there is no use.  And he makes up his mind right then and there not to say it to her again until she returns the sentiment.

            And he knows that it's his time to leave.  He could get down on bended knee and plead his case to the slayer once more, but tonight he feels pretty good about himself.  His life is worth something to her.  And suddenly it doesn't matter that he's going back to a ruined crypt where there's no place to lie down and no place to store his blood.  She needs him.  

            And he adores her more than ever.

            The two sisters stand together as they watch him walk away.  The tension in Buffy's shoulders abates as he disappears into the darkness.  Dawn's inquisitives snaps the silence like a twig in the forest.

            "I don't know, Buffy.  I'm starting to feel a little sorry for him,"  Dawn says.

            Buffy did pity him, but not the way Dawn did.  She pitied him because he was a damn fool.  She would never love him.  And he would never stop loving her.

            The next night, Buffy is returning from the graveyard.  She was wrong in her estimation about there being three hundred vamps lurking about the cemeteries.  There had to be twice as many as that.  In the first hour she encountered five, the next, six more.  As she's walking, her stakes click together like pick-up sticks in her satchel and she almost feels like a little girl returning home from a play date, if it weren't for the fact that she feels so aged and robbed of all energy.  She hasn't been in training for nearly a week and she fears it is starting to show.  She wasn't able to kick as well tonight, not as high, not as fast.  Her instincts weren't as keen tonight.  She had to forcibly turn off her thoughts many times to keep her mind on the job.  Three vamps got away and she didn't even bother to chase them.

            Maybe Spike did save my life last night, she says to herself as she walks.

            She could feel the vampire's breath on her neck, his arms gripping her tight.  He had a grasp on her that she couldn't wriggle out of anyway she tried.  He was a strong one and he had caught her at a weak moment.  She should have heard him sneak up behind her.  No, she should have never turned her back to a vampire.  That left her vulnerable, open for the kill.  There was that moment when the vampire's incisors touched her skin.  Her weapon was in her hand, but she couldn't do a thing with it.  Her arms had been pinned beneath her in his terrible grasp.  And then, all at once, the arms disappeared, the weight of the body as well.  He had been killed.  And the person she had to thank was Spike.

            Last night she had been too proud to utter the words.  They never even occurred to her.  She had to put on that act, that "Girl Power bit" as Spike once called it.  "I saved your ass, Spike.  You didn't save mine."  If she had told him that the opposite were true, she would never hear the end of it.  She could never put herself in a position of owing something to him.  There could be no weaknesses in the Buffy foundation.  She had to be strong and straight all the time.  If he knew that he has actually saved her life…

            She didn't want to think about it.

            She enters the house and all his quiet.  It's a Saturday night and Dawn usually stays up to watch Saturday Night Live, but this night she has gone to bed early, it seems.  But then Buffy glances at the time on the VCR and realizes it's after one o'clock in the morning.

            Damn, no wonder I'm so tired, she says to herself wearily.

            But it appears that no one else is up either.  The TV is on, but no one is watching it.  She sees Spike's white head glowing in the dark over the top of the chair he is sitting in, but he does not move, even when she says his name.

            "Spike?"  her mouth is dry and her voice comes out in a rasp.  In her irrational, tired mind she thinks he might be dead.  But if he were dead, he'd be dust.  

            She makes a half-circle around the chair until she sees him, full-on.  He is sound asleep.  His mouth is slack, slightly open, and there are small, hushed sounds like a muted ocean roar coming from the opening between his lips.  She has never seen him sleep before and for a moment, she is enchanted.  It is a novelty to see him this way.  She has wakened him from sleep before, but has never taken the time to study him, see what he's like when he's not animated and full of the anger that possesses him most of the time she's with him.  His brows are slightly knitted, as though something is concerning him even in the peacefulness of this drowse.  His left hand is tucked under his chin; the other, nestled in his lap.  His left leg is crossed over his right, which dangles to the floor.  His instincts are as keen as hers, and she wonders if he is just pretending to sleep, but she detects no motion from him.  And the sound of his slumber is lulling her to sleep as well.

            But then, the eyes flutter and he sits bolt upright in the chair.  His eyes focus on her immediately.  And the smile that greets her is a scold sent her way, for standing there and watching him for so long and not saying a word.

            "That's it,"  she says.  "You don't get your $5.50 tonight, Spike."

            He stretches and moves his hips over the seat of the chair, almost seductively.  "Sorry.  Must have drifted off."

            "Must have.  You were snoring so loud the neighbors called."

            "And what did you tell them?"  he asks, playfully.

            "Vampire in the house,"  she says.

            He smiles.  "Vampire in the house."

            She smiles too.  She hates it, because sometimes, there's something about him that just makes him smile.  When he's in her house this late, and after he's looked after her sister all evening, he seems so different.  There's no monster in him.  It's easy to forget who he is because he's trying so hard to be someone else.  She forgets easily.  Without that chip, he'd spring up, bury his mouth in her neck, bite deeply, empty her quickly.  But with the chip, he's sitting there, calmly, a bit drowsy, rubbing his face like a cat.

            "I didn't get much sleep today,"  he says.  "There was more trouble at the crypt."

            "Oh?"

            "Some vamps heard about what had happened last night."

            "God.  Are you guys on the internet or something?"

            "It's a small town, babe.  Vamps hear things.  We have ears, not modems."

            "What happened?"  she is suddenly aware that her question makes it seem as though she cares.

            "Well, as the sun set, I was sitting there, minding my own business, when the door came crashing down.  There were just two of them this time.  Two I can handle.  Don't worry, pet.  I dispatched them.  Had the stake at the ready."

            Whenever he makes a point, Buffy has noticed that his jaw does this funny shift, like a flinch, only slower.  And he purses his lips afterward.  It is a smug, self-satisfied look but tonight, she interprets it differently.  

            "They know about you, don't they?  They know that you have been helping me."

            He doesn't respond automatically.  He purses his lips again and drops his eyes.  

            A sudden, clear thought develops in Buffy's mind.  _Oh, my God!  He's really risking his life for me! It's not a question of killing other vamps for the fun of it.  He has to now.  Because of me!_

            "Oh, my God,"  she says.  And she repeats it several times.

            There are several reasons that inspire her continued exclamations.  For one, she has told herself over and over again that Spike has no soul.  He cannot feel.  He cannot own a conscience.  His life is the kill, is the blood.  Even with the chip in his head, he still wants to kill.  She can still feel his anger, his resentment for being tamed against his will.  He is feral and cagey, restless in his desire to do evil, she has always said to herself.  And that's what makes him dangerous.  He's the clichéd timebomb waiting to go off.  But tonight he is sweet and giving and good to her.  Good to Dawn.  Good to see him sitting there in her house, in her favorite chair, looking sleepy.

            "Spike, why…"  but she knows the answer.  She asked him for a favor.  And he would do anything in the world for her.

            He stands up then.  He stands up, and she feels instantly dwarfed, a pygmy against a Brobdignagian.  He reaches for her face.  He cradles her chin in his hand.  She grabs his wrist, not wrenching it away, but just holding it there.

            Again, he has to look into her eyes.  Though it is dim, he can still see the gold rings around the green and they seem wider.   Her eyes are giant pools of harnessed green sea, churning.

"What are you thinking?"  he asks.

A slayer never reveals what's she's thinking to her prey.  But he is not her prey now.  His hand his cupping her chin and she is holding it there.

"I'm thinking that…you should stay here,"  and she wonders who is saying that when she hears the words.  She can feel her lips moving, but it seems astounding even to her that she has just invited him to stay.  "If you're going to protect Dawn, I need you alive."

The shock filters through him, the after effects shifting around in his mind, playing out on his face in a series of slight, silent movements. 

 "Pet,"  he says.

            There's enough fight in her left to volley that term of endearment.  "Don't call me that,"  she says.

            He leans his head in close, whispering into her ear, "What do you want me to call you, then?"

            Buffy feels his lip rub against her earlobe and his breath flows down the canal in a gush of passion.  She closes her eyes, briefly, and dizziness causes her to sway slightly.  His arms go to her shoulders to steady her.

            "What do you want me to call you?"  he asks again.

            Something in her snaps to attention, though his longing for her is flowing through her like a raging river.  As she's about to be taken down by his desperation,  she eases her stance through her lips.

            "Call me Slayer."


	3. Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

            It is morning.  Dawn creeps out of her room as the first light of the new day is filling the house.  Buffy is not awake yet.  There is no movement in the house, no sounds of dishes being rattled in the kitchen, no boards creaking under anyone else's steps except hers.   She looks at the bathroom greedily.  Yea, first shower of the day goes to Dawn.

            She walks into the bathroom.  And then immediately walks out.

            Seconds later she is tugging her sister awake.

            "Buffy!  Spike's the in the bathtub!  Spike's asleep in our bathtub!"

            Buffy is slowly waking.  "I know.  I put him there last night."

            "What?"

            Buffy flips over on her back and yawns.  "You were asleep last night or else I would have told you.  I guess I should have warned you."

            "Buffy, you are totally scaring me.  What's going on?"

            The events of the late night are like dreams to her now.  And Dawn is demanding more of an explanation than Buffy can give right at the moment.  Even she is not certain how it happened, or why it happened, but somewhere in the course of the evening she had pretty much invited Spike to live with her.

            Buffy rubs her face and sits up, cross-legged, on the bed.  She motions for her sister to sit next to her and pulls her close.

            "Dawn, I can't watch you all the time.  And if something ever happened to you, I don't know what I'd do.  You're the only thing I have in the world.  I was only thinking about you when I did this, OK?"  She takes a breath and exhales deeply.  "Spike is going to be living with us for a while.  I don't know how long, but for now, we have a new roommate."

            "You mean he's going to be here all the time?"

            "Yeah,"  she says.

            A sweet smile lights Dawn's pale face.  "Cool!"

            Buffy's tone turns cautious.  "But don't tell anyone, OK?  For now it's going to be our little secret.  This is not something for show and tell."

            "But what if people come over?  What are we going to do then?"

            Now there is worry in Buffy's face.  "Hadn't thought about that."

            A few minutes later Buffy and Spike are heading down the stairs to the basement.

            "You're going to have to stay down here,"  she says.  "And I mean _stay down here, all right?"_

            "All the time?"  he almost whines.

            "Well, no.  You can come out when Dawn and I are home.  But if anyone comes around, you have to come down here.  At the first Scooby sighting, you better make tracks.  They can't know that you're staying with me.  Right now, anyway.  You'll be kind of like the sea captain in _the Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  You're here, but you're not really here."_

            "And the only other person who can see me is bloody Charles Nelson Riley.  Lovely,"  he says.

            She watches him as he's looking around at his surroundings.  He's standing next to a box of Christmas ornaments and a jolly, plastic snowman with tinsel wrapped around its neck.  Spike puts his hands on his hips and sizes up his new living quarters with a visible consternation.

            "Right, then.  I can adapt.  This isn't so bad.  Got just the right amount of gloom and fung shuay to keep a vamp happy."

            "I'll bring a mattress or something down here."

            "Oh, so generous.  I don't think I've ever had something so nice as a mattress before,"  he says glibly.  "And I'm going to need some blood."

            "I'll stop by the butcher's shop today."

            "And don't go that one down on Elm.  Friggin' bastard sold me pig's blood with a hair in it."

            She heads for the stairs, intent on searching for a mattress.  But as she starts to leave, he catches her by the shoulder.  She turns around and he places both hands on her shoulders.  They were this close last night.  He had figured out where the new parameters had been set.  He could touch her now.  Their lips almost met.  She had been so taken with the thought of his sacrifice for her, she had almost allowed him to kiss her.  He had dreamed of their first kiss for such a long time.  He never imagined it would be taking place in her basement.

            And it doesn't.

            She quickly slips away from his grasp and bounds up the stairs.

            _God, he wants me,  Buffy is thinking as she walks down the street._

            She still remembers the feel of his lip touching her ear.  It still feels inflamed from his touch.  That searing, nearly torturous love he has for her became all too real the night before.  Even when he told her that he loved her, it was almost as though she didn't believe it.  She knows now.  She knows because he touched her.  And it didn't feel all that wrong.  And that is what has been driving her nuts since one o'clock in the morning.

            _I can't let him in, I just can't…she repeats to herself._

            _But I already have!  He's living in my house now!_

            Someone is calling her name from across the street.  She turns her head in the direction of the hello's and sees Tara and Willow approaching.

            "Buffy!"  Willow says.  

            "Hey, Will,"  she says.  It seems odd to see them.  Sometimes it seems she has been away for a while, kidnapped from the earth, and has been plopped back into her life, having to get used to living in alien skin.

            She receives their hugs awkwardly and Tara automatically holds her in a suspicious gaze.  Tara has perceptions and intuition that scare her sometime.  If she sees it in her face that Buffy is hiding something, it will all be over.

            "Watcha doing out today?"  Willow asks.

            "Just getting some things I needed for the house,"  Buffy says.  "I have to take care of everything now."

            "From a butcher's shop?"  Tara asks.

            Buffy has been trying to hide the brown paper bag behind her, making it more obvious in doing so.  "Oh, this?  It's just…steak.  Dawn and I are going to grill some steaks tonight.  Ironic, isn't it?  The slayer grillin' some steaks."  She laughs nervously.

            "How's Dawn doing?"  Willow asks as her close by paramour continues to probe Buffy's secrets with her eyes.

            "Dawn?  Dawn's fine."

            "Where is she?"

            "She's home."  _Oh, God, why did I say that because now they're going to ask…_

            "Alone?"

            "No.  She's got a friend there.  I just thought I'd give them some alone time.  All that Backstreet Boys music was driving me nuts."

            "You should have asked us to come over.  We would have looked after her,"  Tara says.

            "No, that's all right.  She's fine.  Really, she's fine.  I'm going straight home right now."

            "Well, could we go with you?  I haven't seen Dawn since the funeral."

            "No, she's got her friend with her.  You know how teenagers are.  They just want to be left alone.  Burning their CD's.  Watching TRL."  Buffy is observing Willow's disbelief.  "I'm just trying to give her some space."

            Willow's mouth opens to a perfect "O" and she nods silently.

            Tara is too pensive to speak.  Buffy feels her stare seeping into her like liquid mercury.

            "Well, hey, it's been good to see you.  Wish I could stay and chat.  But I can't.  You understand, don't you?"

            "Yeah, we understand,"  Willow says.

            "Completely,"  Tara says.  And the knowledge behind that answers fills Buffy with fear.

            "Maybe we could come over one of these nights.  You know, when you're not busy,"  Willow suggests.

            "That would be great!  Oh, that would be great!  You know, once I get things together.  Things are kind of a mess now."

            "We could bring some movies over or something,"  Willow says.

            "Oh, a movie night!  Haven't had one of those in a long time."  Buffy is trying to find an entrance for her good-bye, but it seems her friends are intent on keeping her there in their grasp for a while.  "I really gotta run, you guys."

            "OK.  But say hello to Dawny for us, will you?  Let her know we're thinking about her."

            "I will.  And she knows,"  Buffy says.

            As she starts for home, her heart is racing.  _God, what was I thinking?  She wishes that some force would re-establish the reasoning side of her brain, which has seemingly been switched off since her mother died.  She knows there's no way in hell this new arrangement is going to work out.  Even with Spike living in the basement, he's too close.  Even when he was in his crypt he was too close.  Hell, even before he arrived in Sunnydale he was too close.  She has effectively elicited some sort of relationship with him now.  _

            _He's going to think he's got a chance with me now, she thinks.   __He's going to think I share his feelings, and I don't!  I couldn't…_

            At this moment, sending Dawn to a convent somewhere doesn't seem like such a bad idea.  She would miss her, but she would be safe.  All she wants to do is keep her sister safe.  Spike has to understand that.  That is the only reason why she would have asked him to move in.  

            "That's the only reason,"  she affirms to herself.

            When she enters her house that day, the TV is on again, but no one is watching.  Dawn has left her cereal bowl on the floor and the Cheerios have swollen to the size of half dollars.  She bends to pick it up and take it into the kitchen when she hears something.

            There's a strange noise in the house.

            She listens for a moment, setting the cereal bowl down on the table by the stairs.  She hears the noise again, joined by a man's voice.

            It's the sound of Dawn laughing.

            Dawn is laughing, and it's as though the whole house has become a crystal vase and its quivering with music.  The laughter cascades down the stairs in a waterfall and laps tentatively at Buffy's feet as she stands at the landing.  Dawn is laughing.  Dawn has found happiness again.

            She follows the laughter into Dawn's room where she finds her sister sitting on the floor, with Spike lying on his side.  He is holding a CD booklet in his hands and reciting lyrics as though he's giving a dramatic reading.

            _Oops, I did it again._

_            I played with your heart_

_            Got lost in the game_

_            Oh, baby, baby Opps!_

_            You think I'm in love_

_            That I'm sent from above_

            I'm not that innocent 

            He clutches the booklet to his chest.  "Ah, poetry.  Pure poetry.  You know the fellow who first thought up that pairing of 'love' and 'above' would be so proud that it was included in this masterpiece."

            "You don't like Britney?"  Dawn asks.

            "Oh, I'd give her a nibble, I suppose,"  he says, eying the CD cover wolfishly.

            "You'd bite Britney?"

            "Yeah.  Why not?"

            "Would you bite, like, anyone in *NSYNC?"

            "Oh, I'd suck *NSYNC like their music sucks."

            "What about the Backstreet Boys?"

            "Mmmm….slurp, slurp, slurp."

            "And then you could go on tour!"  Dawn says.

            He laughs.  "It'd be a sell-out, I'm sure."

            There is such giddiness in Dawn's voice, Buffy stands transfixed at the doorway.  She leans on the doorframe, enchanted by the sound of her sister returning to life.

            Spike looks up from the CD cover now and sees Buffy standing there.  He gives her a slight smile.

            "Hello, Buffy."

            "Hi,"  she says.  "What are you guys up to?"

            "Dawn's giving me an education on the finer points of modern pop music.  I'm finding that it sucks pretty much all the way down the line,"  he says.

            Buffy smiles at him.  This time there are no other thoughts to distract her countenance.  She is too blissful to think of anything but how good it is to hear Dawn laughing again.

            Buffy is finishing up her homework for tomorrow in the kitchen.  She is surrounded by piles and piles of books.  Her concentration is just gone and she can't read word one of any of them.  She scoots back in her chair and rocks back and forth.  A shadow passes by the door.  She knows that Dawn is in bed.  Her heart leaps---Mom?  But she knows it couldn't be.

            Spike pops his head in the doorway.

            "Hey,"  he says.

            "Hey,"  she returns wearily and she rubs the back of her head.  

            "You about finished?"

            "Can't do anymore tonight,"  she says.  "I'm all tapped out."

            He nods.  "You want some company?"

            She considers this for a moment.  She's not sure what kind of company she's going to be at this point.  Her brain keeps misfiring in information overload.  But eventually she hooks her foot under a nearby chair and pulls it out for him.

            He sits cautiously and for a while they say nothing.  Spike browses the books lying open on the table and Buffy continues to rock in her chair, slowly.

            "Got a test or something tomorrow?"

            "No,"  she says, "I'm just trying to catch up on some work from while I was gone.  Willow gave me all her notes."  She reaches for a stack of papers.  "All carefully annotated, typed, and printed out on a desk jet."

            He laughs a little.  "A bit anal, isn't she?"

            "You might say that."  She buries her head in her hands for a minute and massages her temples.  "I ran into her today.  I think she may have guessed that something was up at casa Buffy."

            "So Red suspects that you and old Spike may be setting up house together, eh?"

            It kills her how he refers to himself in the third person all the time.  But then again, she does the same thing.

            She glares at him.  "We're not setting up house together, Spike.  This is not _Three's Company.  But I can see my friends getting all Mr. Roper on our little arrangement if we're not careful.  They could be a problem."  She shakes her head slowly.  "I don't know.  I'm still figuring things out here."  She drops her head and says in a small voice that he can barely hear above the hum of the fridge.  "But I do know that you've been great with Dawn."_

            Spike knows that this is the closest thing he'll ever get to a thank you and smiles.

"Little Bit is a good kid.  Smart, charming, and quick as a fox.  Not at all like her big sister."

            She narrows her eyes at him.  

            "You're helping her a lot,"  she continues.  "I mean, when I came in today and heard her laughing I had to remind myself what it was I was hearing.  I can't remember the last time I heard her laugh.  I can't remember the last time I laughed.  Oh, wait.  Yes I do.  Had to be when that robot threw you out the window at the Spring Break party."

            "Oh, yeah.  That was a real laugh riot.  Enjoyed that one myself.  Nothing like a little humiliation in front of one hundred complete strangers."

            She smiles at the memory and then tucks it away.

            "Here lately, I haven't been of much use to anyone,"  she says.

            "I don't know about that, pet---- " and he quickly corrects himself.  "Slayer.  You saved me from being extra work for the street cleaner the other night."

            _You saved me_…She quickly shakes the thought out of her head before it can be vocalized.

            "It's just like, all of a sudden, I've got this huge inbox in front of me.  And everything inside is marked, 'Needs Attention Immediately.'   I just…I just…some days it's just too much.  I just feel like screaming, you know?  Just yelling my head off.  But I've always got to be the one in control.  I've always got to have the cool and steady head about everything.  I wake up every morning and everything is right out there, ready to get me.   You'd think being the slayer, is would be the other way around."

            "Not to worry, slayer,"  Spike says.  "If the world ever becomes too much weight on your tiny, well-sculpted shoulders, you can always put your head right here,"  he says, pointing to his own shoulder.

            She shakes her head as she glowers at him.  "You're never going to stop trying are you?"

            He smiles.  "You know me too well."


	4. Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

            "I thought I told you, no smoking in the house, Spike!"  Buffy rages as she dumps a saucer of spent butts into the trashcan.  "Except in the basement---where you belong---and outside on the porch."

            Spike is sitting calmly, watching her with an air of bemusement on his face, though he is trying to catch the remaining minutes of Judge Judy on the TV.  He stretches out his legs and plops his heavy boots on the coffee table.

            "Sorry, babe.  You must have accidentally de-activated the no-smoking sign before you left today,"  he says.

            "And I told you also, Spike, that you are to stay in the basement when we're out of the house!"  she says, roughly removing his feet from the coffee table.

            "But I'm bored down there,"  he says.  "There's not much to do but sit and figure out why you've got all those bleeding canned peaches from 1985.  Do you honestly think they're still any good now?"

            "Well, listen, Kato,  if you've got so much time on your hands, maybe you could do a little work to help out?  Like, I don't know…"  she reaches for a mug on one of the in tables.  "Wash out your bloody mugs after your done with them?"  She spies another one on a nearby bookshelf and still another on the table by the stairs.  "Three mugs?  Why can't you just use one and refill it when you're ready for more."

            "But the first mug was in here and I was in the kitchen.  The blood was in the fridge.  So I looked up in the cabinet and saw that you had all sorts of lovely mugs.  Didn't know there was a limit on how many I could take out at a time."

            She bends down and collects some of the magazines he's tossed haphazardly on the floor during his afternoon alone.  She finds it very suspicious that most of them deal with women's health issues, one of which contains an article about self-breast exams with actual photographs.  

            "You're a pig, Spike.  That's all I can say.  You've been here over a week and you still won't lift a finger to help out."

            "Oh, I've got a finger for you,"  he mutters, easing back further into the chair and crossing his arms to conceal which finger he was talking about.

            Dawn is up in her room, lying on her stomach, her diary open to the current date.  As she listens to what's going on downstairs, she cannot help thinking how her sister's bickering with their vampire guest is beginning to sound so commonplace in the house.  Not a day goes by without it and she's starting to think that the day it ceases will be the day she'll have to check and see if they've killed each other.

            She twirls the pen in her fingers before she begins to write.

            _Dear Diary_,

            _Spike still here.  Buffy still really mad.  Nothing ever gets too heated between them, though.  I listen.  If I ever heard furniture or bones breaking, I'd call someone.  So he's not the best houseguest in the world.  So he doesn't clean up after himself.   He's still kind of fun that have around.  It took me a while to get used to the blood in the fridge.  And the fact that he even though he's walking around and talking to us, he's not really alive which, when you think about it, is kind of freaky.  But I think I've adjusted better than Buffy has.  Way better.  They're fighting now.  I don't fight with him, because I can't say the things back to him that Buffy says.  They're fighting now, but, like every day, the fighting will end, they'll talk about why they fought, and then they'll make up in their own non-making up sort of way._

Back in the living room, Buffy has snapped off the TV.  She is standing in front of it with her arms crossed, strong against his protests.  

            "Hey!  I was watching that!"  he yells.

            "Spike, I'm going to say this again and I hope I make myself perfectly clear.  You have to stay down in the basement when Dawn and I aren't home.  Understand?"

            "But there's no telly down there.  And that mattress you gave me smells like piss.  Where did you find that one?  Homeless shelter surplus?"

            "That mattress used to be mine, thank you!"

            "Well, you must have had it before you got back into life with Depends, then,"  he says.

            Her mouth flies open.  "That's it!"

             Instantly, she grabs him by the collar of his shirt and lifts him effortlessly onto the floor.  With the top of his tee shirt balled in her hand, she drags him into the kitchen, heading straight for the basement door, with him screaming and swearing the whole way.  She is so angry, she can't hear him over the uproar of emotion bellowing through her head.  She reaches for the door with one hand, throwing him in with the other.  Before she closes the door, Spike makes for one final plea, but she cuts him off before he can utter a single word in his defense.

            "New house rules, Spike!"  she says from her side of the door.  "You have to stay in the basement all the time now."

            "Buffy!"

            "ALL THE TIME!!!!"

            There is silence from his side of the door and then three gusts of frustrated breath.

            "Fine, then!  I'll just finish drawing mustaches on all your friends in your high school yearbooks that you store down here."

            "Oh, that's real mature, Spike.  What are you, five?  Can I send some coloring books down to you too?"

            She takes a few breaths to calm down and leans heavily against the door.  She can still feel him on the other side and wishes she had shoved him down the stairs.  Before she walks away, she reaches for the lock and clicks it into place.  

            "That can't keep me in,"  he says in a muted taunt.

            She storms off across the room and grabs one of the kitchen chairs, shoving it under the doorknob.

            "The chair won't work either,"  he says.

            Furious, she then pulls the whole table, with some chairs in tow, over to the door, shoving it with so much force that for a minute she thinks it's going to go right through the wood and slice him, delightfully, in half.

            "And that goes the same for the table!"  he says.

            By this time she is already tired of this game and leaps up on the table, sitting on it with her back to the door.  As the anger slowly begins to defuse, she drums her fingers on the tabletop and knocks  her head slightly against the door.

            "The fridge might work,"  Spike offers in a teasing voice that comes right into her ear.

            And for a minute she contemplates moving the appliance, but then abandons the idea and the table, deciding he's not worth the effort this or any other day.

            Dawn has heard scuffling in the kitchen below, but no actual breakage.  When she hears the sound of her sister's footsteps crossing over into the living room, she knows the situation has been resolved.  For now.

            _Yeah, my sister hates him.  It's in her genes, I think.   But still, every once in a while, I'll see something different in her when she looks at him.  It's like she's trying to like him, but can't talk herself into it.  Like when we're all sitting together watching TV or sitting at dinner.  He'll say something funny and she'll try not to laugh.  I know she's trying not to laugh because it looks like she's about to explode and she shuts her mouth really tight.  I wonder how she looks at him when no one's watching her.  I've seen how he looks at her, too.  The boy's got stuff in his head that I'm told I'm too young to understand, but I know.  He's crazy about her.  He has to be to put up with what he does.  I don't know, diary.  From one day to the next, I don't know if I'm going to find them kissing each other or killing each other.  But I'll keep you posted._

            "Buffy, I can't find Mom!"  Dawn says.  "I've looked all over the house and she isn't anywhere!"

            Buffy wakes very slowly.  But the emergency in her sister's voice makes her spring up in bed.

            She strips the covers off and hits the ground running.

            "When's the last time you saw her?"  Buffy asks, tearing down the upstairs corridor.

            "The same time you did.  Last night when she went on her date with Brian."

            Buffy looks in her mother's room.  The bed has been undisturbed.

            "She did come home last night, didn't she?"  Buffy asks.

            "You talked to her, Buffy."

            Buffy decides that rather than disturb her sister further, she will comfort her.

            "Maybe she had to go out for something this morning.  Maybe we're out of milk or something."

            "She would have told us, Buffy.  She wouldn't just leave like that, would she?"

            "Have you checked all the rooms in the house?"

            "Yes!  Even the basement!  Oh, wait.  There was one room I didn't check.  The living room.  I didn't check the living room."

            "Well go check it then, Dawn.  That's where she probably is."

            "You're right, Buffy.  She's probably in the living room."

            Dawn takes off down the stairs and as she does, a strange thought comes into Buffy's head.  I can't let her go into the living room.  _That's where Mom is and Mom is…_

"Dawn!"  Buffy calls after her sister, taking off in her direction as fast as she can.  "Dawn, wait!"

She can hear Dawn's voice, high and pleading.  "Mom?  Mom?  Are you in the living room?  Mom?"  and then the voice stops abruptly and there is a scream.  By this time, Buffy has come into the living room.  Their mother is lying on the sofa, completely still, her eyes open wide and unresponsive.   Dawn is screaming so loud that she can't hear Buffy's words.  All at once, Dawn collapses on her mother's stilled form on the sofa. 

"Mommy!  Mommy!"  Dawn screams over and over.  "Mommy, I need you!  Mommy, please don't go!  Please don't go!"

Buffy awakes.

She's had this dream before, often.  This was the first time that Dawn found the body, though.  In the others, she is always the one, as it were in reality as well.  Every time she has this dream, she is so glad she was the one who found her mother.  She is so glad that she was there, that afternoon.

Her flowers are still in the entryway… 

She looks over at her clock.  It's 4:30 in the morning.  She has been sleeping about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.  She doesn't want to go back to sleep now.  That dream may be awaiting her in her sub-conscious again.  She has visited her fears tonight.  She doesn't want to meet up with them again.

 The night is deafeningly quiet.  Lights are out all over town.  It is cold and her flannel pjs fight wimpishly against the chill as she walks out onto the back porch.  She folds her arms and sits down on the top step.

            This is where she goes to be alone often.  But ever since she became the slayer, she has never been truly alone.  Always someone lurking, always someone who thinks her number is up.  But tonight she is alone.  And it's an odd feeling for her.  Her mother gone, her sister asleep.  No worries.

            But there are.

            She feels a sob rising in her throat and doesn't even try to battle it.  She's alone, after all.  

            But in an instant there is a shadow over her.  There are a few seconds of resentment.  But she is too self-absorbed to really care.  She doesn't care if it's Dracula himself behind her.  

            "Buffy…"  she hears a voice say behind her.

            She doesn't respond.  She can't.  Her voice has been cut off in a deluge of sudden tears.  She hates herself as she chokes out her sobs, hates herself for being so weak, hates herself for not being able to defend Dawn even in her dreams…

            A presence plops itself beside her.  Close.  Jean-clad legs.  It's not Dawn.  The body is cold.  She doesn't acknowledge Spike's presence.  She just begins speaking.

            "Maybe if I had been a better daughter, she'd be alive,"  she says, sniffing.  "Maybe if I had been more of the daughter she raised, and not the daughter I became, later, after all this 'Chosen One' crap started to happen.  She never understood.  I don't think she had a clue in all her life what I was about.  She deserved better.  I mean, here she found out I was the Slayer.  And then she found out Dawn was the Key.  I wonder sometimes if she wished, 'God, I wish I just had normal daughters like everybody else?'"

            "Normal daughters are overrated,"  Spike says.

            "But she did everything she could to make our lives as normal as possible.   She loved us.  I remember her loving the both of us.  But that's not really true, is it?  There was only me.  But why are those memories of the three of us the most vivid of all?  I remember Dawn's face when she didn't get the Barbie Dreamhouse she wanted for Christmas.  She got a Barbie car and some clothes instead.   'Dawn, you can use Buffy's dreamhouse,' Mom said.  But I saw Mom's face.  I know if Toys R' Us had been opened on Christmas day, she would have broken into it to get that dreamhouse for Dawn.  Hell, I could have broken into it for her."

            "Barbie dreamhouses.  The eternal female want and regret,"  Spike says.

            "But I know it's always a parents' worst nightmare that a child will die.  Mom always looked at that twenty-five-year old limit with dread.   Like it was on a calendar in her mind.  Whenever we celebrated my birthday, I could always hear her saying to herself, 'She made it to this one.  But my daughter's not going to live past twenty-five.'  I think she wanted to protect me.  All her life.  But she couldn't.  Our positions were kind of reversed.  I had to protect her.  Mom…"  She misses calling someone that.  She misses hearing herself say it and have someone respond to it.  She misses smelling her mother's scent as she's fresh and clean and bathed in Crabtree and Evelyn, going to the gallery or to the kitchen, whether it's to put in a pop tart or defrost a roast.  She misses her.

            She buries her head in her hands.  There's no stopping the sobs now.  She couldn't stop them, even if a nest suddenly invaded the back yard.  Even if demons were striking their fists against the front door.  Even if the person next to her put his hand on her shoulder.

            "Slayer,"  he says, his hand on her shoulder.  "Slayer."

            There is movement in him then.  Not just to touch her, because that's all he's wanted for the longest time.  But because the sobs he is hearing are making him listen to his heart.  This, he is rusty on.  What does one do aside from lending a comforting pat?  There is the hug, a gesture she may find too offensive, though she's clearly lost in her pain.  She can't judge him at this point, he feels sure.  She can't fight back.  She needs someone…

            The arm which had been on her shoulder encircles her back, the hand attached drawing her close.  Her head falls like quicksilver on his shoulder.  She wants this, he says to himself.  She wants me to hold her, comfort her…

            Her forehead is near, bold, open.  Tender.  Her lips are down below, but right now there is her forehead.  And his lips are closer to that part of her face.  They find themselves there, and he waits for the protest in her.  His lips.  Lips.  Lips of Spike! She had once said in disgust in the aftermath of Willow's spell.  But tonight they are not refused, not on her forehead anyway.

            He tries her cheek.  They are welcome there too.  He even senses her straining a bit so that he can reach effectively.  But what about her mouth?

            He whispers into the side of her face.  "You can tell me to stop,"  he says.

            "All right," she says.

            "Do you want me to?"

            He waits for her answer.  But she inclines her lips towards his, his desire bursting in gallons, flowing in river rapid strength into her soul.

            His lips are on hers.  Here is their first kiss.  Yes, this is how he's imagined it.  Buffy is tentative at first, unsure.  But she gives in.  She gives in when she feels how ardent his lips are, how intent, how quick they are to satisfy. 

            She presses himself against him.  Her mouth is open, receiving every longing he has had for her twenty times over.  He moves his hands across her back.  So tiny, so delicate.  He cannot believe she has beaten him so many times.  Or that she is now in his arms, kissing him.  And there is no spell.  She is giving herself to him willingly.  He knows this because she keeps murmuring "mmmm" and drawing his face closer.  And there is night and there are no sounds except for those radiating from their shared affections.

            Their mouths briefly part.  He smooths her hair and her longings scale the height from her eyes to his.

            "Buffy…"  she says.  His lips follow her jawline to her neck and he breathes against her collarbone.  "I want to make you mine…"

            There is just the hint of teeth against her neck.  There is just the brief thought that the being she's with is the last person she should be kissing because she's felt his teeth endeavoring to rip into her neck before, meaning to kill her,  But it's not so much the teeth that bother her tonight than what he said as he was perusing her neck with his lips.  "I want to make you mine…"

            _If that chip weren't in his head…_

_            She could have easily given in.  The minute she felt his hand unbuttoning the top of her pajamas…_

            "No!"  she says.  "No!"

            Spike affects that stunned look, last seen when he found out he had been de-invited from her house.  _Her house._

            "Buffy…"  he tries.  "Please?"

            "I can't,"  she says.  "I can't!"  and she reaffirms this by standing up suddenly, effectively slipping from his grasp.

            He stands up with her.  "Slayer,"  he says.

            She flashes one last determined look in her eyes before fleeing for inside.  "I just can't."

            But Spike is not ready to give up just yet.  His arm enacts further pleas as she tries to enter the house, grabbing her, tugging her tight against him.  He rams his hardness against her and thrills when she gasps and doesn't try to run away.

            "You need me,"  he says.

            She is imbibing all the naughtiness of his words with dull acknowledgments.  She hears his words, but she cannot give in.  Not on this night with her mortality so much on her mind.

            She retreats into the house.  Spike is alone in the place where he first found her wounded.  And now his heart aches worse than if she had pushed a stake into it.  At least he would be gone if she had.  But he remains.

            She sets off for the upstairs.  He returns to the basement.

            The night goes on.


	5. Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

            "So tell me what you've found out, Xander?"  Giles says in the Magic shop one evening.  All of the Scoobies, except Buffy, have gathered for a hastily called together meeting.  It seems there is some concern about Buffy's behavior as of late.  She has not been around as much.  Given the fact that her mother has just died, this is not unusual. Even so, things seem a little bizarre, a little off-kilter in other respects that have set her friends to wondering.

"Well, I know she's been going to a butcher's shop every day.  But not to the one on Elm.  It was closed by the health department last week."

"How do you know this?"  Giles asks.

"They used to have the best sausage links.  Linked their own.  Gotta love a butcher who links his own sausage.  And he had this giant meat grinder.  When I was out of work, I'd go down there and watch him grind up meat all day.   It's was like Pink Floyd's _The Wall live, without the suicide-inducing music__."_

"Yes, but how do you know about Buffy?"

"Try to stay focused, honey,"  Anya encourages from his left.

"Oh, Buffy.  Right.  Well she's been going to this butcher on Main Street.  Not as entertaining as the one on Elm, but his lamb chop prices can't be beat."

"And what's she been buying?"

"Well, here's the odd thing.  Pig's blood.  By the gallon."

"She was carrying a butcher's bag when Willow and I saw her a couple weeks ago,"  Tara says.

"So, either she's planning on getting all Carrie on some high school prom or---

"She's supplying a vampire with blood,"  Giles says.  

"Spike!"  Willow gasps.

Giles removes his glasses and massages his eyes.  "I wasn't going  to share this, since it was told to me in confidence.  But as her friends, you should know."  He takes a breath.  "Spike has been looking after Dawn in the evenings."

There is a collective hush.  This bit of information is not a shock, somehow.  Someone had to be taking care of Dawn while Buffy was at school or on patrol.  She couldn't be there all the time.  What were we thinking, they all seem to be saying to themselves.

"There's something else,"  Xander says.  "Anya and I were going through the graveyard the other day."

"We were going to put flowers on Joyce's grave.  Marigolds and snapdragons.  Which don't look like dragons after all,"  Anya says.

"And we walked past Spike's crypt.  It didn't exactly have that lived in look.   The door had been ripped off and everything inside had been destroyed.  Even poor Spike's beloved TV."

"I suppose some demons or some of his own kind could have been seeking some sort of revenge on him,"  Giles says.  "I would like to think he's left the area.  Or has left this world all together.  But I think we have evidence that says otherwise."

"Oh, my God!"  Willow says.  "Do you think that…" she can't finish.

"I think Will speaks for all of  us,"  Xander says.  "Buffy's got a new bunkmate."

It's too terrible for Giles to even fathom.  And in his head he is already writing his letter of resignation to the Watcher's Council which will surely be asked for if he doesn't volunteer it.

"I suppose this is all my doing,"  Giles says.  "I'm her Watcher, for Christ's sake.  I should have been keeping better tabs on her."

"We should all have been paying more attention to her.  I mean, her mother just died.  She should have her friends around her.  She needs us,"  Willow says.

"Well, we can sit here all night and damn ourselves for not being more aware of her situation, or we can decide to act,"  Giles says.

"I suppose we could just ask her.  'So, have you seen Spike lately?  Maybe somewhere in the confines of your house, slurping blood slushies on your sofa late at night?'"  Xander offers.

"As her Watcher, doesn't she have to tell you everything?"  Tara asks.

"I am the recipient of privileged information in that regard,"  he says.  "But she is entitled to her secrets."

"But this is a biggie,"  Willow says.  "I mean, Spike?  The guy who chained her up in his crypt and built a creepy shrine to her?  I know if I had a stalker, I'd want him sleeping under my roof."

"Clearly she is not capable of rational thought at this point and time.  And clearly, we have to confirm our suspicions before we act on any of them.  Since she has told me he is coming over in the evenings to watch Dawn, I won't go over there tonight.  But I will go tomorrow afternoon.  If he's there then…"  He wants to finish by saying, "I'll kill the bastard."  But he keeps this to himself.

            "But I haven't been out at all for such a long, long time, Buffy,"  Dawn pleads as she follows her sisters around the kitchen.  Presently, Buffy is loading up the dishwasher with a dozen or so mugs, all stained with blood, all found in the living room that day.

            It seems there is going to be a slumber party that evening and all of her friends are going to be there.  

"Dawn, you get out of the house every day.  It's called school,"  Buffy says tiredly.

            "But that's school and school is work and stuff and this is going to be fun.  You know that girl, Amelia?  She's the one who got her tongue pierced?  Well, anyway, she went to an *NSYNC concert and she totally taped the whole thing.  She says she's going to bring it."

            "Mmm…a fourteen-year old who indulges in body piercing and bootlegging.  Just the kind of person I want my only sibling to hang out with."

            "You let me hang out with Spike,"  Dawn says.

            Buffy slams the door of the dishwasher, nearly knocking the thing out of the wall.  "That is by necessity, not by choice,"  she says through gritted teeth.

            "Oh, please, Buffy, please!  I wanna go soooo bad.  If you let me go, I'll…I'll do the dishes for the week."

            "No,"  Buffy says.

            "I'll…I'll clean your room…do your ironing?…wash all your clothes?…shine your shoes?"  she keeps asking to her sister's repeated denials.  "Buffy, why can't I go?  Give me one good reason why I can't go!"

            She had plenty of good reasons.  The biggest one she couldn't say aloud because the thought of it terrified her.  _Glory will find you…  A group of giggly teenagers would be no match for a god's vengeance, even if they were blasting boy band CD's at excruciatingly loud levels._

            Just then the basement door opens and Spike enters the room.  "Coming through,"  he says.  "Just going for a bit of  blood from the fridge---Oh, I'm sorry.  Am I interrupting something?"

            "Yes, go away!"  Buffy intones.

            "Spike, Buffy won't let me go to a slumber party tonight!"  Dawn says.

            The minute she says this, Buffy knows she has lost her grip on the situation.  Permanently.

            Spike regards Buffy with that wolfish grin that she has come to despise, but completely expect whenever he senses her chips are down.

            "Aw, Buffy!    A slumber party?  What with the itching powder and the sleeping bags and endless rounds of 'Truth or Dare' and all.  Buffy, you could do your sister more harm than good by denying her this completely necessary rite of passage.  Well, she could be permanently ostracized.  Made out to be some sort of pariah.  You wouldn't want to do that, would you, Slayer?"

            "It's going to be all my friends will be talking about on Monday.  If I don't go, I'll just die!"

            But Buffy hasn't given up yet.  "Dawn, it may not be safe for you there.  You know that."

            "But it's just a block away.  You could be there in seconds if something happened.  And nothing will happen."

            "Yeah, Slayer.  Nothing bad ever happens at slumber parties.  Except for the occasional mass murder by a deranged psycho on the loose.  But that only happens in pictures, right?  Anyway,  you'd make short work of the likes of Michael Meyers and Leatherface."

            "Buffy, please!  Please!"  Dawn says, bunching her fists under her chin.

            _Why is it that here lately everyone has been asking me please?  _

            Of all the nightmarish situations flashing through her mind, the one that's paramount to just about everything else is the fact that if Dawn goes, she will be left alone with Spike.  And she hasn't been alone with him since that night on the porch when she…      

_What if Glory does find her?  What if Glory finds her and takes her away?  What if life as I know it ends tonight?  What if Spike tries something with me while she's away?  What if I let him…_

            The memory of his kiss is still so fresh in her mind she can tap into it without even trying.  It seems to still be on her mouth, the touch of his lips, the heady fragrance of tar and blood.  The hardness, the familiarity…the desire that had the power to nearly peel  off all her inhibitions and left her wondering, even now, "What if…?"

            "I'll call you every hour.  I'll call you the minute I get there and after minute after,"  Dawn says.  

            "That's a little excessive,"  Buffy concedes.  

            "Come on, Slayer.  You remember what being a teenager was like, don't you?  It wasn't that long ago.  Now for me, it has been a long time.  But I know if I were a teenager now, I'd want to be with a lot of squealing girls in their nightgowns on a Friday night."

            Buffy glares at him.  This is a look he is accustomed to and expects.

            "Please, oh, please, oh, please!"

            Buffy has had enough.  She hates to lose.  But she hates to play the bad guy as well.  There's a part of her still trying to reason and not be the harsh disciplinarian.  It doesn't quite feel like her role yet to have the final say.  Her sister's happiness hinges on what she will say.  She wants her sister to go and have a good time, forget about things for a while.  But what if…what if…

"All right,"  Buffy says finally.  Dawn gasps in delight, but Buffy has to leave her with a warning.  "But!  Only on the condition that you come home first thing in the morning."

            "Aw, Buffy!"

            "You know the alternative."

            Dawn accepts these terms, reluctantly, but still rewards her sister's brand of generosity with a kiss before she dashes up the stairs to pack a bag for the evening.

            Buffy is suddenly aware of the fact that she is alone with Spike.  He stands across the room, leaning against the counter, his arms crossed, his eyes, not quite fixing her with a piercing glance, but laughing at her.

            "They grow up so fast, don't they?"  he says.

            She sighs.  "Get out of my sight, Spike."

            He laughs and gathers himself up for a trip to the fridge.  He opens the door and reaches for the paper carton of pig's blood inside the door.  He shakes the container from side to side and listens with dismay to the near-emptiness inside.

            "I'm almost out of blood, Slayer,"  he says.

            "Then maybe you should go to the butcher shop and get some then.  Maybe sometime, say, around noon tomorrow when the sun is at its hottest?"  she says.

            "Or, I can go for something a little more homegrown,"  he says, twisting off the cap of the container.  "Something with a bit more kick to it, a bit more flavor."

            She stiffens.  "What are you talking about?"

            "Oh, I don't know,"  he says, observing the tiny slurp of blood left at the bottom.  "I'm in a house with two living, breathing females.  Two females with nice, long necks, just bursting with bloody goodness."  He takes a swig of her blood.  A little dribbles from his mouth and he wipes it away.  "Mmmm…doesn't even compare to the delicacies at my fingertips here at chez Summers."

            She instantly begins cataloguing the weapons that are at her disposal in the kitchen.  The table leg could be snapped off in a pinch, it's jagged edge just sharp enough to plunge into his chest.  There's a wooden spoon in the right drawer by the sink.  That could be used.  There's a broom in the pantry.  It's made of wood…

            "Of course, I can't really do anything about it myself,"  he says.  "Not until I say good-bye, Mr. Chip.  But, I don't know if you've noticed, but Little Bit and I have become quite chummy lately.  We talk, we laugh, we have all sorts of private jokes.  She tells me about her friends at school, the boys she likes, the teachers she hates.  She has come to rely on me, Buffy.  She trusts me.  Maybe even loves me a little.  I've told her I'd do anything for her.  And I think she feels the same way.  I was thinking, maybe, _maybe one of these days, she might do something very special for me."  He is moving now, across the floor.  His eyes fall on the jar of utensils by the sink.  There is a knife there.  He fingers the handle before he takes it into his hand and holds it in front of him like some maniacal Shogun.  "She could use this.  Open up a vein on her wrist.  Or in the crook of her elbow.  Let me have a drink   A long, quenching suck.  Not quite long enough to do her any real harm.   I'd stop before I killed her, though.  At least, I think I would.  But after all this time of living on pig's blood, who knows what I would do once I had a taste of what I really crave."_

            The horrific vision of what he has just presented is performing in her mind.  She can see Dawn writhing on the sofa---that sofa---with Spike's head nestled deep in her arm.  She can hear his pleasure and Dawn's willing pain.  Here, just minutes before she was thinking about what she could smash up to make a weapon.  And here he's holding a real one, against her.

            "I hate you,"  she says in a low growl.

            "Really?"  He is approaching her now, with the weapon in tow.  "Because that's not what I was sensing from you the other night.  "You remember, don't you?  We were outside.  It was cold.  You were shivering, crying all alone.  And then I sat beside you.  And in a short while, you were shivering and crying in my arms."  He is standing right in front of her, a breath away.  "And then you took these lips," he says as he touches his thumb to her mouth.  "These eager, pouty lips and put them right on mine.  You remember that, don't you?  You remember old Spike's lips moving across yours, his tongue exploring your mouth, your tongue finding out a few things about his?  It really happened, Buffy.  You can deny it all you want, but in the end, you know what happened.  You remember."

            His face is coming towards hers.  His lips are almost touching hers again.

            But then Dawn's voice intrudes.

            She is calling from the upstairs, "Buffy!  Can I borrow your cow pj's for the night?"

            Dawn's voice seems more than a little out of place, a cheerful little trill in an angry toccata.  

            It takes her a while to respond.  And when she does, she is ashamed that her voice is so filled with emotion it's quaking.

            "Sure, Dawn, go ahead,"  she says.

            "Thanks, Buffy!  I love you!"  her sister says.

            There is a slight, sickening smile on Spike's lips.  He has backed away from any challenge now.  And the knife goes back where it was before.

            He picks up the container from the counter.  "If you need anything, you know where to find me,"  he says.  And he departs for the basement.

            Buffy is alone in her room.  It's just a little past eight o'clock.  Dawn has been at the slumber party for an hour and has called, twice, to say she's fine and not to worry.  But she does worry.  She can't stop worrying.  Even as she puts on music to distract her, her mind cannot concentrate on anything but her sister a block away, and the vamp in her basement.

_Here we are now going to the Eastside_

I pick up my friends and we start to ride Ride all night, yeah, we ride all day 

_Some may go along and some may stay_

            She wants to get out so badly her skin is crawling.   The door to her room is closed.  Locked.  She doesn't know why she locked it.  The only other being in the house could get in, easily.  Her left hand is twisting knots in her hair.  Her right hand clutches a stake.

            Spike is lying on the mattress down below in the basement.  It's pitifully too small for him and his feet hang over the side.  He doesn't know what time it is, but he knows Dawn's been gone for a while.  He's heard Buffy speak to her twice on the phone in the kitchen.  He wishes he had some music to distract him.  He heard a song Buffy was playing the other day and it's been stuck in his head ever since.

Here we are now going to the Westside 

_Weapon in hand as we go for a ride_

_Some may go along but some may stay_

_Watching out for a sunny day_

He wants to get to her so bad his skin is crawling.  He knows she's probably in her room with the door locked.  But she knows he would be able to break it down, easily, if he wanted to.  In his left hand he holds a lit cigarette.  His right hand is relaxed against his heart.

Buffy turns the music up.  As she is walking across the room, she feels the vibrations on the floor from the speakers.  She has put the song on repeat.  For some reason she hasn't been able to get it out of her head lately.  She has played it so much that now it seems like she's listening to a part of her soul.  She stretches her arms over her head, lifting her shirt.  The cool air from the open window meets her bare skin and she shivers.  The stake is still in her hand and though she has seen it there so many times tonight it seems rather out of place, since she's in a house with a de-invite spell on it so tight not a bloodsucker in town could slip one toe in.  All except one.  And he is already there.  She cannot forget for one minute that he's there. 

_Here we are now going to the Northside_

_I look at my friends as they start to ride_

_Ride at night, yeah, we ride all day_

_Looking out for a sunny day_

            He gets up from the mattress and moves across the room, his lit cigarette still in his hand.  He hasn't taken a puff in a while and there is a long column of ash forming.  He walks around carefully, making it a sort of game to see how long the ash will remain before it finally falls.  The paper shrivels as the ravenous orange mouth of the flame devours it from the inside out.  Eventually he tires of this, takes one last puff, and snubs it out under his boot.  Now it's time to see what Smiling Bob is up to.  That's what he's named the snowman Buffy has stored down there.  Presently, the plastic yuletide ornament hangs from the ceiling, suspended by a garland of tinsel.  He bats at this ghastly piñata, watching it swing by its neck, back and forth.

_Here we are now going to the Southside_

_I pick up my friends and we hope we won't die_

_Ride at night, ride through heaven and hell_

_Coming back though, it feels so well_

Her biggest mistake was letting her guard down, allowing him to kiss her, she knows.  What was she thinking?  She knows what she was thinking.  The things people do when they've permitted themselves to be lonely too long.  When he kissed her that night, she wanted it.  And for the next few days, she wanted it.  She wanted that defiance, that detour from her nature that she has to make occasionally to remind herself that she is still human.  That night with his longing for her in the air, and eventually on her lips, she had to respond to that need.  It was puncturing her deeper than his teeth ever could, draining her, making her so weak that she had to give in.  But it wouldn't happen again.  Not after what he said about Dawn.  Not after she was reminded that even with that chip, the evil that stole his soul so long ago is still potent.  Even Vesuvius still blows smoke now and then, she remembers.  Tonight he didn't merely blow smoke.  He breathed fire.  

She should have told him to leave right then and there.   It is her house.  She could have called Willow and Tara, had the de-invite spell reactivated right away.  Why didn't she think of that?   Thing is, the words "Get out of my house, Spike!" didn't even occur to her. 

Do I want him here?  For some, sick reason, do I want him here?  I needed him…to take care of Dawn.  But he could hurt her.  He could kill her…

He has begun punching the snowman, with soft blows, just barely enough to set the thing swinging.  But every punch grows steadily more forceful, as he thinks, with mounting intensity about what all this is doing to him, being more or less at Buffy's whim.  A glorified babysitter for Glory's much sought-after Key.  At first his very being had convulsed in joy at the thought of living every moment under her roof, in her world.  But where is he?  He is in a dank hole in the bottom of her house, hitting a snowman.  He can't touch her.  The air all around her can touch her, but he can't.  He can breathe that same air, but he senses every minute he does, she is despising the fact that they have to share it. He can't even go near her without her transmitting venomous thoughts of hatred with her eyes.

_Why does she keep me here?  Why doesn't she just bloody well tell me to leave?  _

He throws another punch at the snowman and he hears a crunching noise and his fist feels the stale, hot air of the inside of the snowman.  He looks down and sees his hand is submerged in the side of the thing.  But the snowman still smiles.  This angers him.  He rips the snowman down from the ceiling and hurls it across the room.

"She's playing a game with me.  She's toying with me.  She knows how I feel about her."  He walks over to the snowman, lying with its wounded side exposed to the light.  "She knows I love her!  She knows I love her!  Stupid, bloody bint!"  He launches his booted foot into the snowman, squishing it in half.  He kicks again and again, the plastic giving way, disintegrating, becoming nothing but rubble.

He bends in two, panting, his hands on his thighs.  He rises steadily, trying to catch his breath.  He looks at the smashed remains of the snowman and goes for another kick.

"I need a drink,"  he says.

Buffy has had enough of her room and she goes down into the kitchen.  There's some Ben and Jerry's in the freezer.  A spoonful, maybe two.  Whatever is left, she wants it.  And she wants it badly enough for her to encounter…

"Spike!"  she says in an extended gasp, though she had expected to see him there, in her kitchen, out of his basement confines, into her direct view again sometime that night.

He bends quickly, sorting through the various bottles stored under the counter next to the sink.  Buffy hears him mumbling…"Vinegar…olive oil…something called Southern Comfort, bloody hell and…"  He emerges, triumphant.  "Yes!"  he hisses.  "Cooking Sherry!  Now, that's the stuff!"

"You're raiding our liquor cabinet?"  Buffy asks.

"Liquor cabinet?  Is that what you call it?  Didn't your mother ever drink?  I would if I had been her,"  he says.  But he's not meaning to start something with the Slayer now.  He mutes all impulses to continue on with any further insults.  He glugs down a few sips and grimaces.  "Bloody hell, how long has this been here?"

"Mom didn't use it that often,"  Buffy says.

He takes another swig.  "Lucky for you."

Buffy digs the ice cream out of her freezer.   Finding a spoon, she begins to eat, taking the carton with her to the upstairs.

Before she can get way, Spike beckons to her.

"Hey, wait.  What's the rush? Talk to me,"  he says.  The alcohol is going straight to his blood-deprived head.

She halts any further steps, holding her ice cream, her spoon suspended over her next mouthful.

"Talk to you about what?"  she asks.

"Sit down and talk to me, you bloody bint,"  he says.  "Isn't that what we ever do these days?  Just talk to each other?  Fight with each other?"  He takes another drink of the sherry.  "Toy with each other?"

"I'm going up to my room,"  she says defiantly, though she knows there's more ahead.

"No, wait!"    he says, taking another brief drink,   "I want you to hear what I have to say."

She puts a hand on her hip.  "About what?"

He starts to laugh.  "Look at you.  All Slayerly and the like.  Protecting yourself.  Always."

Buffy has two things in her hands:  a spoon and her ice cream.  Her stake is upstairs, on her bed.  She expected him to be there, in her kitchen, this night.  But somehow she forgot her stake.  Even though…

"You know why I first fell in love with you?"  Spike asks.

She doesn't want to hear the answer, but she stands by, sifting her spoon through the quickly melting ice cream.  "Why?"  

"Because,"  he says,  "I thought you were so different.  An anti Dru.  You were kind where Dru could be cruel.   But I learned that wasn't so.  I have learned that the opposite is true, but I wasn't willing to accept it.  Until now.  You are just as cruel as Dru was, only more so.  If Dru tortured her victims, she eventually showed them some end to their torment.  You don't.  You just keep on torturing.  And I'm your latest victim.  Your latest tease.  You keep me in your basement because you can.  Your're exacting control over me.  It's all about control.  How you control yourself.  How you control me.  It's always and everything about you.  You're keeping me here because you know I want you.  You know I love you.  But here, in your own house, you can have me on your own terms.   And that's how you've always wanted it between you and me.   On your own terms."

She is still in her position on the floor, still too consumed in digging away at her ice cream.  She has not eaten a bite.

"You know it, Slayer,"  he says, grabbing her by her shoulders.  "You've loved me from first glance.  We identified each other as mortal enemies and did nothing about it.  How many times did I have the chance to kill you?  How many chances did you have to kill me?  And we never did.  We never killed each other.  And that's why we're standing here at odds together, wondering why we're in the same house, wondering why we're not fucking or killing each other. It's either or between us.  But you see, a few nights ago, I felt how much you needed me. I felt your lips caving in around mine.  Your desire…your fear…"  He smiles down at her.  "It was all there in your kiss.  I've never felt a more potent kiss in all my life.  It was intoxicating.  I haven't been able to sleep it off since."

He is holding her face in his hands now.  Her fingers are getting chilly around the ice cream carton and she feels it slipping from her grasp.  His breath is scented with her mother's cooking sherry and his lips are coming near.

But then there is a sound.  It's the phone.

"I've got to get that,"  she says slowly.

"All right,"  he says.  

When she still lingers there, he leans in close and whispers into her ear.  "No one's stopping you."

She sets down the ice cream on the counter and picks up the phone.  Her voice is trembling when she speaks.

"Hi, Buffy,"  Dawn says.  "Just checking in.  'Cause I said I would.  Even though now everybody here thinks I'm some kind of freak 'cause I keep calling my sister."

Buffy tries to steady her voice as she watches Spike pace around the room, his arms folded, building up more ammo for the next round.

"I'm glad you called,"  Buffy says.

"You all right, Buffy?  You sound weird."

"I'm fine,"  she says.  She doesn't sound very convincing, even to herself.  "I'm just tired, I guess.  I don't know."

"Is Spike there?"  

She stares over at Spike and her mouth instantly goes dry.  _Something is going to happen…Dawn, come home because something is going to happen between us and you're the only one who can stop it!  _"Yeah, he's here."

Spike knows he's being talked about and gives a little smile, flexing out the muscles in his face.

"Can I talk to him?"  Dawn asks.

Buffy hands the phone over to Spike.  "She wants to talk to you,"  she says.

Spike takes the phone and nestles it under his chin.  "Hey, Little Bit,"  he says.  "You havin' fun?"

"Oh, my God, yes.  You would not believe…You'd be going crazy here, though.  Everyone here likes *NSYNC more than I do.  Amelia's even thinking about getting an *NSYNC tattoo.  Well, not really the whole group.  Just Justin Timberlake's face."  She giggles a little.  "On her butt."  

"Sounds like a fitting place for that arse,"  Spike says.

"I thought you'd like that,"  Dawn says.

"So you're all right, Little Bits?  Not homesick or anything, are you?"

"Homesick?  I'm just on the next block!  Geez!"

"Well, have a good time then, luv.  Try to get some sleep.  And have sweet dreams of Justin Timberland."

"Timberlake!"  she squeals.

"You can tell me all about it in the morning,"  he says.

"All right.  Tell Buffy not to worry."

"Will do."

As Buffy witnesses the easy exchanges between her sister and Spike, and the affectionate smiles that keep reoccurring on his face throughout the conversation,  a thought occurs to her:  _He wouldn't hurt her.  He might say he would, but I don't believe he could._

Spike gives the phone back to Buffy.  "She doesn't want you to worry."

But she is.  Very.

She wants to make her escape now.  She has her ice cream and her spoon again and is on her way to the stairs.

"You know, Buffy.  If this is how you treat all the blokes who go two-for-two on your four-poster, it's no wonder you're alone on a Friday night,"  he says to her as she's leaving.

Now she is on her way up the stairs.  She doesn't stop walking until she's safe in her room with the door locked.  She sits at her desk with her ice cream and her spoon and eats angrily.  She doesn't want what he said to interfere with her enjoyment of the last few bites of the pint, but it is.  She tries to drain out the words in her head by going over to the stereo and turning the song on again.  Loud.  It's neighbors calling because the kids can't sleep loud.

The music is rattling the pots in the kitchen.  Spike is still here, bottle in hand, pacing.  He continues to drink.  There is almost nothing left now.  He hears the music and he has heard it so many times it feels like he's listening to a part of his soul…

The bottle flies across the room and crashes against the stove.  He's done.  This is all he can take.  This is where it ends.

And this is where it begins.

She doesn't hear him coming down the hall.  She is standing in the middle of the room when it happens.  There is a thwack as Spike's boot connects with the door and it comes splintering open.  The music is so loud she can't hear her own gasp when she turns in the direction of the noise.

He is standing there, pulsating with anger.  His jaw is set in a fearsome clench.  The stake lays on the bed.  But she does not try to reach for it.

He steps up to her.  His breath is coming down on her face in heated drafts, stirring the stray hairs at the top of her forehead.  His hands are on her, clutching her, pulling her close.   There is nothing in her that tells him she's going anywhere but where he's going next with this.

His lips are now on hers.  Her hands go to the back of his head.  She wants this.  Her verbal protests against having any feelings for him amount to nothing when she's kissing him.  Her needs are all too clear when her mouth is engaged with his.

His pelvis is moving slowly against hers.  She reaches for his backside, drawing him closer.   He groans through the assault on her mouth and clutches at her.  His hands are cold through the fabric of her tee-shirt and they are moving, down, to the hem of the shirt.  The action of his removing her shirt is too quick to even calculate.  She wraps her legs around him.  He staggers with her attached as they lumber over to the bed.  They do not part, once.  She is lying under him now.  The bra is the next to go, pulled off in one easy tug.  Her breasts are tiny, like little scoops of white snow.  He kisses them as his hands endeavor to remove her drawstring pants.  Her hands are quick to remove his shirt and it comes off like a flap of black skin.  And then she finds the zipper of his jeans.  The music is still pounding, but she can hear his boots land on the floor.  As he's kissing her, the tip of his finger makes the rounds, exploring the outside of her underwear.  And then inside.  Without so much as a warning, his fingers are inside her.  And this is where she cannot lie as well.   His fingers are slippery with the dew she is making as she cries out his name.

His mouth goes to her breasts, then to her stomach.  His tongue traces the area below her navel and she flinches.  His fingers are still inside her.  One has found the right spot and she moves her hips over the bed to the rhythm of his strokes.  Then his mouth his there.  His tongue.  His teeth.  She moans as he devours her, spreading her legs, running her hands through his hair.

Her thighs are beginning to shake around his head.  The music is still playing, but in the air, all around, her sounds are rivaling the volume of the tune coming from the speakers.  The building pleasure is causing her to quake and she grabs for the headboard, holding tight.  Just as she's about to let everything go, just as she thinks she can take no more, he is inside her.  Her eyes fly open to the sight of his face, right over hers.  His mouth is wet.  His chin glistens with her moisture.  He bends to kiss her and she tastes herself.

He is deep inside her.  She watches his face.  His expression convulses with each thrust.  There is a tender look, then the fierce look of a beast.  He is watching her as well, the desirous, hungry look in her eyes.  Her tongue running along the rim of her bottom lip.  She puts her lips together to say his name and he lowers his head so that he can hear her, so he can know that at this moment, she wants this more than anything in the world.

The sights around her are dissolving into prisms of light.  Even when she closes her eyes, the colors are still there.  She squeezes her eyes shut.  She squeezes him with her inner muscles and he shudders as he takes the Lord's name in vain and then screams her name.  She clenches him again and she watches his face break out in pain, then absolute joy and he screams her name again.

He plunges himself inside her and exits, slowly, withdrawing almost completely.  But then he is inside her again.  His motions quicken.  His breath falls on her face, his voice falls in her ears.  She grasps him firmly as he enters one last time.  His stomach jerks against hers as he empties himself inside her.

The song has now played about ten times.  And now that they are lying in each others arms, the music in an intrusion.  But neither makes a move to silence it yet.  He is still inside her.  It's not enough to just lie beside her.  He has to be a part of her.

Finally he rolls over and gets to his feet.  She watches him walk across the room to the stereo.  The music stops.  And there is silence.  In the sudden hush, they are aware of how hard they are breathing.  Like geldings after a derby.  He returns to her side and buries his head between her breasts, kissing her once before settling there to sleep.

She lays there awake for a while as he tumbles into slumber.  She bends to kiss him once before snapping off the light.  In the darkness and in the quiet, her thoughts are too numerous to count.  But of all the chaotic uncertainties plaguing her, there is one thing she can sort out and put in the definite category.

She has never been so screwed in all her life.


	6. Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

            Buffy awakes.  When she is coming into consciousness again, she is murmuring her lover's name.  But he is not there.

            It's a shock, not seeing him there.  She calls his name, loudly this time.

            "I'm out here, luv,"  he says from the hallway.

            She reaches down for her tee-shirt and for her panties and puts them on swiftly.  She is out in the hall now, searching for Spike who is looking through her linen closet.  He is fully dressed.  Black tee, black jeans, black duster…why?

            "What are you looking for?"  she asks.

            "A blanket,"  he says. 

            "For what?  Are you cold?  I can warm you up if you are,"  she says, grabbing him from behind and latching onto his ear, kissing him there.

            "No, I need a blanket because I'm leaving."

            "I told you I'd go get the blood for you,"  she says.

            He sighs.  She doesn't like this sigh.  And she doesn't like the face he presents to her next as he turns around in her arms.  He can't look at her as he tells her again, "I'm leaving."

            At first she takes this as a joke and is prepared to laugh with him.  But then she sees the seriousness in his eyes.

            "What do you mean, you're leaving?"

            "I'm leaving now, Buffy.  I'm going away."

            His words from last night trickle down into her head as she remembers, potently, when he took her again at 3:00 in the morning.  "Oh, Buffy, I need you so much," and then, "Buffy, I need you always."

            "Why?"  she says, hating the stammer in her voice.  "Why are you going away?"

            "Because I have to,"  he says.

            "That's not a reason!"

            He sees the tears swimming in her green eyes.  She will not acknowledge them, but he will.  _Oh, God, I wish there were a better way to do this..._

            He takes her face in his hands, running a thumb across her cheek.  "Slayer," he says. 

            She pulls away from him, wishing she had more clothes on, wishing she hadn't taken them all off for him now that he's saying these things.

            "So that's it?  You fucked me and now you've had your slayer fix.  So you're leaving?"  she flicks away the tears on her face, hoping that he's seeing her pull back the hair that has fallen in her eyes.

            "No, Buffy.  And I was afraid you'd take it like this,"  he says, approaching her, his hands reaching for her.

            She turns away.  More tears are coursing down her face.

            "Well, how else should I take it?"  she says, trying hard not to sniff.  I guess you thought laying the Slayer would be this big major deal, and now you're disappointed because I'm just like all the other girls you've had your dick in."

            Finally he grabs her and spins her around in his arms so that she is facing her.  Her nose is red and her eyes are pouring tears and he's never hated himself so much in his life.

            He leans in close and places his lips on her.  He feels her lips trying to separate, stubbornly, but eventually they comply.  He has her up against the wall and he is made keenly aware of the fact that she is wearing very little clothing.  He can't extract the thought from his head that a few doors down her bedroom door is still hanging by a thread on its hinges and the bed is still unmade.  His hands caress the curves of her backside and all he can think about is that bed.  Apparently, the bed is on her mind too because she whips one leg around him and begins grinding softly into him.

            When their lips finally part, her eyes are still closed and her mouth is still open.  He puts his forehead up against hers.  "Buffy, I love you more than anything in the world.  And you've got to believe it's killing me to have to leave you.  After last night…God, it was all I could ever wish for.  The fact that I was lying so close to you and you were not turning me away.  The fact that I could reach over and touch you and you touched me back.  You gave yourself to me, Buffy.  And it was more wonderful than I could have imagined.  And then when I awoke this morning, you were right there.  I must have spent the better part of an hour just staring at you and trying to make myself believe that I was really there with you.  For all these years, we've hated each other.  And just one night, we loved each other, completely.  You do things that the Bionic Woman would have to be reprogrammed for.  But as good as it was,  I woke up this morning, a smile on my face, and a song in my heart, and I knew that something was amiss."  He kisses her again because he senses that his voice is about to break.  "Buffy, we could never make this work," he says.  "You know it.  Things could never end up at the happily ever after stage between you and me."

            There is logic in this and she has known this all along, but after last night, after he held her, made love to her, she wants to believe that he loves her and wants to be with her.  There were promises in his touch last night.  He told her that he loved her before.  But last night he showed her how much he did.  And she woke up in love with him.

            "But why do you have to go now?"  she asks, not quite willing to give up yet.

            "Because if I stay any longer it will be impossible for me to leave.  It's nearly impossible for me to leave now,"  he says, pulling her closer.

            As they are embracing Buffy knows he is speaking the truth.  She has come to this same conclusion herself, but she has not scheduled her acceptance of this until a few days later.  Or a few weeks later.  Anytime but now.

            This isn't the cowardly exit of another Parker telling her she has been used and discarded.  This is a deep and abiding apology.  He does love her more than anything in the world.  That is not an exaggeration.  She can feel it in his arms.

            "Oh, God, Buffy.  If I could make it work…if I could twist the neck of this thing and make it work, I would.  I would.  You remember what I told you at the Bronze, don't you?  About what makes you different from the other slayers?  Your family.  Your friends.  Not me."

            In the clutch of vulnerability, she clings to him, whispering heavily, "I do need you."

            He pulls her away.  He wants her to see the reality of things, and not what lust and anger have presented for her and have made real.

            "You don't need me.  Not to do the sort of thing you asked me to do for you.  You can protect Dawn all by yourself.   And if this Glory bird ever shows her face again, she's no match for you.  There's not a being in any dimension who's a match for you."

            She supposes this should flatter her.  But she's too wounded now.  She is dealing with the pangs of a definite goodbye and it hurts so much she wishes the Slayer powers extended to muting emotions at will.  But she is just a young woman, after all, in that respect.  A young woman with feelings exposing them to a creature who's not supposed to have feelings.  But he does.  For her.  

            In the linen closet, she finds a blanket that's tough enough to withstand the harsh rays of the sun against any vamp.

            "This belonged to Angel,"  she says, holding it, caressing the fibers.  "He left it here."

            When he takes it, he gives it a sniff.  "Still smells like the poofter, too."

            She chooses to ignore the blunt cut against her former lover because she's caught up in the oddness of her feelings for the blanket and whom it will be protecting now.

            She follows him down the stairs.  His steps are quick.  It seems he can't wait to leave.  But it's not that way at all.  He just wants to get the pain over with, doesn't want it to linger on her face.  He can't stand to look at her when she's in pain.

            At the door, she wonders where he's going.  And he doesn't know.  

            "I'll hide out in the sewers until dusk," he says.  "Then I'll plan my next move."

            "You'll let me know," she says, hopefully.

            He grabs her hand and kisses her knuckle.  "I'll let you know."

            She doesn't know if this is entirely true, but she relies on the hope that she will hear from him.  Somewhere.

            He takes her into his arms one more time.  There are lions in his grasp.  And she tries to tame them all, hoping her whip will change his mind.

            "Dawn will be crushed that you didn't say good-bye to her,"  she says over his shoulder.

            He squeezes her still tighter.  "You say good-bye for me."

            "I will."

            She knows the door within his reach.  He knows it too.  And the pair struggles with this final moment.  He loves her.  She loves him too.  But she won't tell him that.  Instead, in a whisper, she tells him something that sounds like a confirmation of her love for him.

            "Thank you," she says.  "For everything."

            "Oh, Slayer," he almost groans.  "It's been worth it.  In spades, my love."

            As he is about to depart for the door, he turns to her one more time.  He wants to see her, just one last time, and to say this.

            "Buffy, with each encounter with a Slayer, I've taken something with me.  With the first, there was the scar," he says, pointing to his eyebrow.  "With the second, I took this duster," and he smooths the lapels on his coat.

            "And with me?"  she asks.

            There is that slight, smug smile that she has grown to love.  "We had last night," he says.

            It is early morning and Dawn is due in at any time.  The sun is hot already and Spike secures the blanket around him as he walks out onto the front porch.  She follows his racing form all the way down the street until she sees him no more.  Since she doesn't observe a burst of flame, she assumes he's all right and that he's found his way to the sewers without complication.

            Buffy goes into her room.  She is still crying an hour later when Dawn comes home and wonders what's wrong.  

            It's about noon when there is knock at the door.  Buffy is sitting up in her room, by her window.  It takes her forever to get to the door.  Her movements are slow.  She's feeling ancient, drained and she is wearing a blanket draped around her shoulders, even though it is sunny, bright and warm outside.  She holds the blanket around her for security.

            For some reason, Giles is the last person she expects to see at the door.  It's been weeks since she's seen him, it seems.  It's almost as though she's forgotten what he looks like.

            There's concern on his face.   There is intention in his visit.  And it's not just to say, "Hello, how are you doing?"

            She gives him a hug, and the blanket slips away from her shoulders.  Underneath she is wearing just the panties and tee-shirt she put on that morning when she awoke alone.  She feels Giles stiffen in her grasp and she wonders if he can smell Spike on her.  She can.  She can still feel his touch, his kiss, his presence inside her.  

            She knows she looks a mess.  Her hair has not been combed and her eyes are puffy and red.  But she wants him to see this, see the hurt.  Then maybe he will understand when she tells him what has happened in the past two weeks.

            "Buffy, I was just…in the neighborhood…"  he is moving through the living room, cautiously, peering behind the furniture.  "And I just thought…thought I would…see how you are…"

            She follows him into the kitchen.  He trying for stealth, but his curiosity is pathetically obvious.  Especially when he looks in the fridge.  And later when he goes to the basement door and turns the knob.

            "He's not here,"  Buffy says.

            "Who?"  he says.

            She smiles at his attempts at concealment.  "You can look down there, but you won't find him.  At least I don't think you will.  I haven't checked in the last five minutes."

            "But he was here?"  Giles asks.

            She nods her head slowly.  "Yep, he was here."

            "For how long?"

            "Almost since the funeral."

            "Oh, Buffy…"  there is disappointment in his tone.  "For God's sake, why?"

            "I told you that day in the magic shop,"  she says as she sits down at the table.  She remembers the incident with the chair.  And then the table.   _The fridge might work, though_, she remembers him saying.  His little quirky words keep coming back to her.  Some of them make her smile.  Some make her regret.  All make her ache.  She wraps the blanket around her.

            "You told me that he was to be coming by in the evenings to look after Dawn, not becoming a member of the household," he says accusingly.  He is standing over her with a deep scold on his face.

            "That's how it started out.  But things happened.  He kept getting attacked by vamps because, apparently, his association with me isn't making him Mr. Popularity with the other undead.  So I realized if he was going to be around to take care of Dawn, I had to take him in."

            "You were protecting him,"  Giles says.

            "Yeah,"  she says.

            Now Giles sits down across from her, slowly, with all sorts of questions running through his head.  It's as though he's trying to sort out which ones he has to know and which ones he doesn't want to know, but will find out about anyway.  He's preparing himself to know the truth and it's not going to be pleasant.

            "But now he's gone.  Well, not totally gone.  He's probably down in the sewers right now.  That's where he said he was going to think about things."  She lays her head on her shoulder and sighs.  "Dawn cried when I told her.  She accused me of kicking him out."

            "Did you?"

            _Hardly_, she thinks.  "No.  It was his own decision.  Not mine."

            "Well, what was it that finally convinced the bastard that he's not wanted here?"

            _He is wanted here.  He's needed here.  Right here in these empty arms that are holding onto a blanket in his absence._

            Buffy says nothing.  She only stares at Giles.    Suddenly he can see her broken heart and her loss.  He has seen this look lingering in her eyes since her mother's death, but the sadness in her eyes is new, recently acquired.  But there is confirmation of all his fears in her eyes as well.  The biggest one comes blindingly clear to him.

            "Buffy, did you…"

            She doesn't want him to know everything.  She's not obligated to share everything with this man.  But she thinks he should know that whatever happened is over.

            "Giles, there's nothing you can say to me that I haven't already beaten myself up about a thousand times over in these past weeks.  So don't even start.  All you have to know is that he's gone.  Completely.  And I don't think he's coming back this time."  She runs her hands through her hair.  It's sticky with old perspiration and smells, wonderfully, of him.  "I always send them packing at some point.  I guess he was just getting that part over with before we could get any further."

            Giles' face has now gone from mild shock to disbelief.  Presently, there is a look of acceptance growing on his face and she is relieved.  She hopes he won't ask her anything more, because she's too tired to come up with answers.

            "Are you all right?"  he asks.

            She smiles, a little.  "I don't know.  I'm feeling like I just left Bizarro Buffy world or something.  Like I just saw another side of myself that I didn't know existed.  And this Buffy did everything I would do, except one.  She let someone into her life who probably shouldn't have had an invite.  She fought with all her might to keep him at arms' length, but eventually…things happened.  Things got complicated and the world inside the Summers' house got a little too small."

            This summation suffices for Giles.  He is not here to accuse her of anything anymore.  He is here to comfort her.

            "Where do you think he'll go this time?"  he asks.

            "I don't know."  She has thought about this.   Probably L.A.  She's thinking L.A. because Angel is there and she sent him away wearing one of Angel's old blankets.  He'll want to tell Angel all about what happened.  "Hey, Poof, your ex wanted me to return this to you.  And by the by, I slept with her.  You were spot on about the smelling-like-vanilla thing.  She's the sweetest spice in the rack,"  she can hear him say.

            "Something tells me he'll be back.  Sunnydale is too much of a playground for him,"  Giles says.

            She wants to believe this.  She has kept saying to herself that there's always a possibility he'll reconsider.  He's made similar exits before.  Not quite like this one, but he has turned his back on Sunnydale in the past with every intention of never returning.  But he always finds his way back.  

            "If he does come back, it won't be for a long time.  He'll move around for a while, try to be the Big Bad somewhere else where there are already too many Big Bads and he finds himself outnumbered.  I know somehow Spike will always be a part of my life.  And I can honestly say, I'm OK with that now."  She hears her words and nods in agreement with herself.  "Yeah.  I'm OK with that."

            _On a lonely stretch of highway a little north of the Sunnydale city limits, a man walks alone in the night.  The moon is bright overhead.  Almost full.  The soft, milky white lays its beams down on his pale face, illuminating the expression of someone who's on a mission, who's on his way…somewhere.  The people passing by in their cars regard this solitary figure with suspicion, probably wondering why he's out so late, walking in darkness and wearing all black, tempting fate along the side of the road.   All it would take would be for some motorist to veer a little off the shoulder and it would be all over for him.  But something like a car crashing into him wouldn't put an end to him.  They don't know that this man who walks alone hasn't felt a heartbeat in his chest for decades.  They don't know that this man has no soul.  They don't know that this man can walk as he does, without fear, because there is only one thing that will put an end to his life.  The old stake to the heart.  No, they don't know this man is a vampire.  No, they don't know his heart is stilled in his chest.  And they don't know that his heart is broken because he loved a woman so much he had to leave her.  They only know he's walking.  He's walking away._

                                                            Le fin


End file.
